News and Analysis • Volume 12 • Number 3 • May 2008

EU Biofuel Target Questioned

The Scientific Committee of the European Environment Agency (EEA) has called for a rethink of the EU-wide target of requiring biofuels to account for at least 10 percent of vehicle fuel by 2020. The target was set only last year in an effort to curb steadily rising green house gas emissions from the road transport sector .

The EEA advisory panel based its recommendation on environmental rather than food security criteria. It noted that biofuel production based on first generation technologies did not optimally use biomass resources, and that “technologies for direct heat and electricity generation should be preferred because they are more economically competitive and more environmentally effective than biofuel production for vehicles.” Using finite biomass resources for fuel production should go hand in hand with energy efficiency improvements, the panel said.

The committee pointed out that the land required to meet the 10 percent target exceeded the area available for sustainable production within Europe and would thus require large amounts of additional biofuel imports. This in turn could accelerate the destruction of rain forests, which play a vital function in climate change mitigation , as farmers clear land to grow more biofuel crops for export.

The panel concluded that the 10 percent biofuel target was an ambitious experiment, whose unintended effects were difficult to predict or to control. It therefore recommended the suspension of the goal pending a ‘new, comprehensive scientific study on the environmental risks and benefits of biofuels’, and setting a “more moderate long-term target, if sustainability cannot be guaranteed.”

These concerns – coupled with the role that biofuel production plays in the rise of food prices worldwide – have induced the UK government to review its support for biofuels. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that if the review showed that Britain should change its approach, he would also push for a change in the EU’s biofuel targets.