Haven’t the Commission put in place sustainability safeguards?
 Marco Lambertini
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BirdLife does not support any new biofuels targets in EU legislation as it is not clear that they can be met sustainably, and we are proposing that the 10% target in the Renewable Energy Directive is dropped. The standards for biofuels in the Renewable Energy Directive, as currently drafted, would apply to any new targets that are retained in the Directive and also to the existing target for biofuels (5.75%). These standards need to be far stronger in order to avoid the negative impacts and ensure significant greenhouse gas savings and thus climate benefits from biofuels production.
Biodiversity protection
Environmental safeguards have been included in the Renewables Directive but these are far from adequate. We would like to see protection for all areas of High Conservation Value from biofuels development. In particular, the current draft Directive fails to include important habitats such as savannah grasslands and scrublands that are at risk from biofuels development in South America and Africa, as well as permanent grasslands that are an important store of carbon yet are already being ploughed up in the EU to make way for biofuels.
Significant greenhouse gas savings
It is important that only biofuels that offer substantial reductions in greenhouse gases are accepted towards any target. Currently the threshold is set at savings of 35% compared to fossil fuels, which is severely inadequate. In the Fuel Quality Directive, the European Parliament’s Environment Committee has proposed a higher level of 50%. We propose that in order to make a sufficient contribution only biofuels offering a minimum 60% greenhouse gas savings compared to fossil fuels, should be accepted and that this percentage is calculated using the latest scientific data which must be reviewed regularly and updated. Even more worrying, the Commission proposal ignores the emissions from indirect land use. If biofuels are grown on land already in agricultural use but the previous production is displaced into forests or peatlands leading to huge greenhouse gas emissions, these emissions will not be counted to determine the biofuel’s greenhouse gas balance. This approach means that even those biofuels supposedly delivering 35% emissions savings can, in practice, cause emissions hundreds of times higher than those of an equivalent amount of fossil fuel. Renewable energy has to be a solution for climate change, and provide demonstrable emissions savings.
Other social and environmental concerns
The Commission proposal does not include any social safeguards or any safeguards regarding wider environmental impacts such as water pollution or over-abstraction. The establishment of vast new plantations in developing countries is very likely to lead (and indeed is leading already) to land grabs, human right abuse land rights violations and other unacceptable social impacts. It is inconceivable that EU policy and EU taxpayers money are spent on aggravating such problems. In environmental terms, direct habitat clearance is not the only way in which biofuel plantations can cause significant harm. A current example is the project for large-scale sugar cane plantations development in Kenya’s Tana river delta. Even if the valuable wetlands are not directly converted (which would fall short of the Commission’s proposed standard), plantations would still divert most of the river’s water and lead to the drainage and ultimate destruction of the delta ecosystem (while fully complying with the proposed standard).
 Wildlife Conservation Society
Sumatran Ground-cuckoo Carpococcyx viridis
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Is it just biofuels that need these safeguards? Is BirdLife opposing renewable energy
Renewable energy is a key part of the solution to climate change and all available renewable energy technologies should be deployed as fast as possible. BirdLife strongly supports the EU 20% renewable energy target and is pushing for it to be swiftly adopted and implemented. All renewable energy production should, however, take place in a way that contributes to sustainable development.
There is sufficient potential to have clean and green renewable energy without damaging wildlife or ecosystems. Unfortunately, there are currently insufficient environmental safeguards for all renewable energy in the Renewables Directive. Renewable energy capacity must be built quickly and efficiently with safeguards that eliminate damaging conflicts between industry, NGOs and EU institutions. The Directive should be implemented such that it complies best practice with existing environmental legislation such as the Birds, Habitats and Water Framework Directives.
Most renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and geothermal offer energy production with truly low greenhouse gas emissions. Ensuring their sustainability is mainly about choosing the right locations. Bioenergy (energy produced from biomass) offers a highly variable greenhouse gas efficiency and inevitably places a significant pressure on ecosystems and natural resources. It thus requires more robust safeguards in the form of a well-designed sustainability certification scheme. Nevertheless, most bioenergy applications, such as small and medium scale combined heat and power plants, high efficiency biomass heating systems and biogas installations using waste, can be developed sustainably and give a very significant contribution to the production of clean energy. Even biofuels, despite their extreme inefficiency, should not be ruled out in principle. They should be judged on a case-by-case basis against stringent sustainability standards and only be used if their performance justifies it.
What are the alternatives to biofuels?
We are calling for much stronger EU support for low-cost, sustainable measures to curb transport emissions, including making vehicles more efficient and improving public transport. We are calling for tough standards for vehicle efficiency, long term targets and tough penalties for non-compliance in the CO2 in Cars Directive. Biofuels are currently being used as an excuse by the motor industry lobby to avoid such increases in vehicle efficiency. We are opposed to this approach instead favouring using vehicles less while using models that are more efficient in the most efficient way. Renewable fuels should be considered only after these other measures have been implemented and are justified only if they can deliver significant emission reductions at an acceptable environmental cost. This is already the case for certain applications such as electric plug-in cars or so-called “second generation” biofuels. The problem is that most of these technologies are not currently commercially available. Ill considered subsidies to today’s inefficient biofuels would not bring these technologies any closer and are distracting attention from readily available solutions.