EU policies on Renewable Energy

Renewable Energy Directive

In January 2008 the European Commission proposed a new Renewable Energy Directive with requires 20% of total energy consumption in EU to come from renewable sources such as biomass, hydro, wind and solar power in 2020. Each Memeber State is required to increase its share of renewable by 5.5% from 2005 levels, with the remaining increase calculated on the basis of per capita gross domestic product (GDP). Member States are free to decide their preferred 'mix' of renewables in order to take account of their different potentials, and their national action plans will need to be defined along three sectors: electricity, heating and cooling, and transport.

BirdLife strongly supports the 20% renewable energy target. We believe it is key to reduce carbon emission, thus help in the fight against global climate change. The controversy lies in the 10% mandatory target for biofuels in the transport sector.

In 2003, the European Union set a non-mandatory target in the Biofuels Directive to replace 5.75% (by energy content) of fossil fuel-based transport fuels with biofuels by 2010. It is predicted that Europe will fail to meet this target (EC, 2006), but nonetheless the Biofuel Directive has raised a large amount of interest within biotechnology and corporate communities. In the Renewable Energy Directive proposed by the Commission in January 2008, besides requiring a 20% renewable energy share in the total energy consumption, the Directive also sets a mandatory target of 10% of transport energy consumption to be delivered through ‘renewable sources’ by 2020. In practical terms, this is targeted largely at biofuels replacing fossil fuel. The proposal further stated that ‘Biofuel production should be environmentally sustainable. Biofuels used for compliance with the targets… … should therefore be required to fulfil criteria for environmental sustainability’ (p.17, para. 34).

Why does BirdLife oppose to the 10% target for biofuels in the Renewable Energy Directive?

This binding target of 10% biofuels (by energy content) will no doubt encourage large-scale industrial feedstock plantations, both within and outside EU. The current and past experience with the expansions of soya, palm oil, sugarcane and other such plantations in the developing world suggests that it will be accompanied by widespread environmental destruction and social injustice or violations of land use rights such as the forced eviction of native people and subsistence farmers off their land.