What is wrong with the EU Bioenergy Policy?

The European Commission's biofuel policy laid out in the Renewable Energy Directive is fundamentally flawed. Without stronger safeguards, it might make the European Union a global driving force in the production of harmful biofuel crops, while contributing to an increase on net Greenhouse Gas Emissions and harmful environmental and social impacts.

Current biofuels produced from food crops like maize, sugarcane, rapeseed and soybean oil are unsustainable and are causing worldwide environmental destruction. The enthusiasm about biofuels as a solution to climate change and energy security is unfounded and dangerous.

Biofuels destroy habitats and livelihoods

The increased production of biofuels will lead to further loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Biodiversity, natural resources and numerous communities, especially in the southern hemisphere, will suffer if natural, semi-natural and other valuable habitats are converted for agriculture through displacement. Biofuels will impact indirectly on food security contributing to spike on food prices or competition for land.

Not a solution for climate change

Above all, many biofuels do not provide any greenhouse gas savings when their emissions throughout the life-cycle are taken into account, especially when indirect land use change is included in the calculation. Most biofuels are simply not a solution to climate change, instead many may be part of the problem.

Other biomass technologies have a significant role to play- but are not automatically benign

While transforming biomass into liquid transport fuel is usually wasteful, biomass can be efficiently used in many other ways, especially for heating and for the combined production of heat and power. It is widely recognised that an important part of the EU 20% renewable energy target (which BirdLife supports) will have to be met through bioenergy. However, biomass depends on scarce resources (land, fertile soils, water etc.) and must be used wisely. With proper safeguards, bioenergy can help reduce emissions. But if grown and harvested without proper care, almost any bioenergy technology can lead to perverse effects- destroying biodiversity and increasing GHG emissions.

The EU Directive needs to promote sustainable renewable energy, and drop the biofuel target

The Renewable Energy Directive approved by the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union in December 2008 is a key tool in reducing EU carbon emissions and promoting the use of renewable energy. However, the mandatory 10% target of energy from ‘renewable sources’ in transport by 2020– biofuels in practical terms although it includes electricity and hydrogen energy sources –, can lead to global environmental crisis and could have severe social implications, even contributing to an increase in transport emissions. The Directive’s “sustainability criteria” is woefully inadequate and cannot prevent environmental-harmful biofuels from entering into the European market. The lack of provisions to take into account the carbon impact of indirect land use change, and the lack of an effective and transparent implementation and verification mechanisms contribute all to this weakness.

While standards on biofuels are weak and incomplete, they also do not cover all types of bioenergy for all activities and do not account properly for the real carbon emissions from biomass burning. No sustainability is required, for example, from woody biomass for heat and power production or from biogas. Wood extraction is considered as resulting on zero emissions, when reality is that this can lead to losses of soil carbon and forest biomass. The assumption that all biomass burning is free from carbon emissions is particularly flawed in the case of forest, as once burned trees can take decades or even centuries to recover the lost carbon.
Worryingly, a recent study reveals that current EU and US climate policies, by supporting bioenergy while ignoring actual carbon balance, could displace 59% of the world's natural forest by 2050, releasing an additional 9 Gt of CO2 per year. ( J. M. Melillo et al. 2009)

The European Commission is expected to decide whether to propose any sustainability standards for solid biomass and biogas for heat and power. BirdLife strongly encourages such proposal.

BirdLife proposes the following solutions on how to address the biofuels problem in the Renewable Energy Directive:

1. Scrap the 10% target – and impose a moratorium on all biofuels incentives and targets at EU level
2. Introduce minimum greenhouse gas emissions savings of 60% compared to fossil fuels for all biofuels (the percentage is currently set at 35%).
3. Improve the established sustainability standards for biofuels and expand standards to cover ALL bioenergy, including biomass extracted from forests, against negative environmental impacts.
4. Incorporate social criteria, including land rights, within the sustainability requirements.
5. Establish a proper calculation method of GHG emissions that includes all the impacts of direct and indirect land conversion, as well as carbon stock degradation.
6. Revise existing policies in order to mitigate the indirect land use change risks.
7. Invest in other possible low carbon energy sources in transport, as renewable electricity in transport, and support efficiency targets.
8. Put in place active policies to ensure that biomass is always used in the most efficient way.

It is essential to significantly reduce emissions from the transport sector, but this cannot be achieved by promoting and subsidising biofuels. Instead all transport fuels need to be checked against their Greenhouse Gas Emissions with a robust and credible calculation system and clear reduction targets need to be set for them. The most important measures however are tough efficiency standards for cars and planes, and a general “greening” of transport.

Reference:

J.M.Melillo et al. (2009). Unintended Environmental Consequences of a Global Biofuel Program. MIT Joint Program Report Series, massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 2009.