The EU will unveil legislation on biofuels on Wednesday as part of a wider climate and energy package. A revision of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme for beyond 2013 will also be announced.
In March, the EU committed to a target of raising the share of biofuels in transport from current levels of around 2% to 10% by 2020. The package to be released tomorrow will outline policy proposals to reach the target.
EU biofuel policies have come under attack from the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) of the British House of Commons, with a report Are biofuels sustainable? that states “Biofuels can reduce greenhouse gas emissions from road transport – but most first generation biofuels have a detrimental impact on the environment overall.”
The report raises concerns about the rate of land clearing for biofuel production, with rainforests being cleared for plantations such as palm oil. Issues such as the unregulated use of genetically modified feedstocks were also raised.
Report authors have called on the EU to hold off on committing to biofuel targets until international sustainability standards are introduced and technology improves.
Earlier this month, a group of 17 NGOs including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth Europe wrote a letter to EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs calling on legislation to include safeguards to ensure the production of biofuels will be sustainable.
The letter states important ecosystems and carbon sinks such as savannas or permanent grasslands may be threatened by expanding agriculture to meet the EU biofuel target.
Large scale biofuel production can also cause indirect or knock-on impacts such as increasing food and feed prices and increasing water scarcity, the letter continued.
But EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs said that the EU "strongly disagrees" with the EAC's conclusion. Biofuels are "delivering significant greenhouse gas reductions" compared to oil, Piebalgs said in a statement.
"The key contribution of biofuels to the sustainability of the transport sector should not make us forget its other benefits which are as important as the environmental ones, namely: reducing our dependency on imported oil; providing a development opportunity for poor countries and paving the way for second-generation biofuels", read the statement published on Monday.
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