EU lawmakers call for 12% biofuels by 2030, 10% advanced fuel
The final committee vote on the EU’s controversial amendments to the Renewable Energy Directive has proposed hiking up the bloc’s renewable energy target and imposing a separate biofuel blend target.
The EU Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) voted on Wednesday to set an EU-wide target of sourcing 35% of the bloc’s energy needs from renewable origins by 2030, up from the original EU Commission proposal of 27% and the current target of 20% by 2020.
“(ITRE), through a very broad majority, defends raising the binding target for renewables at EU level from 27% to 35%...and to increase the ambition in the decarbonisation of transport and heating and cooling sectors,” the committee rapporteur MEP Jose Blanco Lopez said after the vote.
The committee, which is responsible for steering most of the legislation through parliament, also set a separate nationally-binding sub-target of 12% for the transportation sector, with aviation fuels counting for double.
Yet while the transport target is marginally higher than the 10% goal by 2020, by also calling for a blending obligation for fuel suppliers to source at least 10% of their fuel from advanced biofuels, the committee did little to allay ethanol producers’ fears that bioethanol will be proscribed.
Calling the raised renewable energy target and the transport target a “step in the right direction”, ePURE, the European renewable ethanol association, said the committee had put into question the achievability of the target.
“As part of a complex architecture setting another 10% obligation for fuel suppliers to blend in low-emission fuels, MEPs voted to prevent Member States from using crop-based ethanol – which delivers 66% average greenhouse-gas reduction compared to fossil petrol,” said Emmanuel Desplechin, secretary general of ePURE.
Target crops
ITRE is the second committee now to have amended the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive to target biofuels, which some commentators say can increase, rather than decrease, greenhouse gas emissions due to indirect land-use change.
In October the environment committee of the parliament passed a proposal to ban the use of crop-based biofuels by 2030 – a move that upset the ethanol industry as it branded all crop-based biofuels as unsustainable.
Of particular concern to environmental groups are biofuels sourced from palm oil (palm oil methyl ester), which are sourced almost exclusively from Malaysia and Indonesia.
Earlier this year the EU Commission said it would launch a certified sustainable palm oil programme to ensure that palm oil entering Europe (40% of which goes to biodiesel) was not increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
For the amendments to take affect they must be adopted by both the European Council, which will meet on December 18 to discuss the bill, and the full Parliament, which will likely vote in January.
“This mess of different committees passing different bills has to be all sorted out before January with a fresh set of compromise amendments,” said one lobbyist who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorised to speak to the media.
The target of 12% of road transport fuel to be sourced from renewable energy mirrors the UK proposed amendment to its Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation.