Biofuels: Commission Urges Caution, Calling to Use Them “for Aviation and Shipping, while for Cars the Priority Is Electric”

Aviation Fuel/Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF)European Union (EU)Feedstocks Field/Orchard/Plantation Crops/Residues Germany Italy Marine/Boat Bio and Renewable Fuel/MGO/MDO/SMF Opinions Other Conferences/Events Policy Presentations

May 22, 2026

Print This Article Share it With Friends

by Giorgio Dell'Omodarme (EU News) Speaking at the plenary session in Strasbourg, the Commissioner for Sustainable Transport, Apostolos Tzitzikostas, referred to the ongoing review of the list of high-risk biofuels: "We have added palm oil and soya to the list of hazardous feedstocks"

...

During today’s (21 May) debate in the plenary session in Strasbourg, MEPs presented two opposing views: on the one hand, there are those who consider biofuels a valid alternative to electric vehicles, a strategic tool for defending industrial competitiveness and achieving the goal of technology neutrality; on the other, there are those who regard them as a limited resource, potentially harmful to the environment and the agricultural sector, and therefore useful only in those sectors where electrification is particularly complicated. The European Commissioner for Sustainable Transport, Apostolos Tzitzikostas, outlined the Commission’s approach, which appears to be closer to this second view.

...

According to their supporters, in addition to their environmental benefits, biofuels offer other advantages that would make them even more preferable to electric vehicles. “Biofuels have an advantage over electric vehicles: they can often be used in engines of existing vehicles, with little or no modification required,” La Repubblica quotes a report by the World Economic Forum as saying.

...

The Commission remains formally in favour of biofuels, but with very specific limits. Commissioner Tzitzikostas himself reiterated this position during today’s debate in the Chamber.

While saying that he was convinced that “biofuels and e-fuels play a crucial role in the decarbonisation of road transport” and that “it is essential to support and incentivise their production in Europe,” the Greek politician reiterated that their use must be limited as far as possible to “those hard-to-abate sectors where emissions are difficult to reduce, such as aviation and maritime transport.” Although he did not make this explicit, Tzitzikostas therefore excluded the broad category of road transport from the list, for which the Commission remains convinced that the best route forward is full electrification.

During his address to MEPs, the EU Commissioner also pointed out that, to represent a viable alternative to fossil fuels, biofuels “must be sustainable, without causing any negative impacts, as outlined in the Sustainable Transport Investment Plan that I presented last year.”

In this regard, as Tzitzikostas pointed out, “the Commission has recently revised the delegated act setting out which biofuels are to be considered high-risk and has found that both palm oil and soya qualify as highly harmful feedstocks,” moving to progressively phase them out.

The clash in the Chamber: the right and left divided over biofuels and electric vehicles

The Commissioner’s report was well received by the centre-left in the Strasbourg Chamber: from the Renew liberals to The Left, there was, albeit with varying nuances, a unanimous call to open up only partially to biofuels, and not to forget that the real objective remains the complete electrification of the transport sector.

Echoing Tzitzikostas’s suggestion that the use of biofuels should be limited to the aviation and maritime sectors, Dutch MEP Mohammed Chahim (S&D) emphasised the need to establish clear rules in this regard: “Without them, it will be the companies that can pay a higher price that will snap up biofuels, and it is not certain that these are the ones that need them most or that have no better alternatives.” The Danish MEP Sigfriid Friis (Renew) took a similarly cautious stance, stating that “biofuels are important for aviation and the maritime sector, but is it really wise to grow maize, soya, or wheat just to put them in car fuel tanks?“

...

It should come as no surprise that the voices most in favour of greater openness to biofuels are those of Italy’s centre-right MEPs: Giorgia Meloni’s government was the first EU executive to give the green light to the conversion of diesel engines to run on biofuels, following a decree that came into force in November 2025.

English version by the Translation Service of Withub READ MORE

Related articles

Renewable ethanol and energy security: Europe has a homegrown solution (ePURE/The Parliament)

Excerpt from ePURE/The Parliament: After all, the case for using more sustainable biofuels has been clear for years. The latest European Commission statistics show that EU transport energy is still more than 92% fossil fuel, and only four Member States have reached their 2020 target (you read that right) for renewable energy in transport.

...

Despite this persistent lack of progress on de-fossilising transport, the EU has been reluctant to use a ready-made solution it already has. But lately there’s been a change of tone from EU policymakers, who now talk about the importance of ‘homegrown’ renewable energy sources, including biofuels, as Europe searches for ways to reduce its dependence on imported oil.

Take a look at some recent statements from top EU officials since the start of the Iran war:

Christophe Hansen, the European Commission member in charge of agriculture policy, talked about how EU ethanol biorefineries could be better used to boost domestic food and fuel production. “There is a huge potential to do more,” Hansen said. “We have refineries all over Europe and all of them are under their maximum capacity.”

He also shot down the long-running ‘food vs. fuel’ myth that has been used by anti-biofuel lobbyists to impose limits on how much crop-based biofuels can count towards EU renewable energy targets.

“The ‘tank vs plate’ dilemma belongs to the past,” Hansen said.

There’s more: As EU leaders scrambled to combat the energy crisis created by the Iran conflict, a statement from the Commission’s Directorate for Energy said that “Increasing the uptake of biofuels could help substitute for fossil petroleum products and alleviate pressure on the market.”

...

But perhaps the most noteworthy words came from the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. In a speech to the European Parliament, von der Leyen said “We must reduce our overdependency on imported fossil fuels and boost our home-grown, affordable, clean energy supply.”

In a letter to German Members of the European Parliament, von der Leyen specifically mentioned E20, a petrol blend with up to 20% renewable ethanol, as a viable alternative to fossil fuel with lesser amounts of biofuel, and suggested the Commission would look at updating the EU’s Fuel Quality Directive to authorise its use.

“The Commission confirms the role that higher biofuel blending can play in decarbonising existing vehicle fleets,” Von der Leyen wrote.

This comes just as the Commission released its AccelerateEU communication aimed at assuring European energy security and reducing dependence on foreign oil, in which it also calls for increased domestic EU production of sustainable biofuels.

...

Other countries around the world – not just big ethanol producers such as the US and Brazil but also India, Vietnam and Mexico – are moving to replace fossil oil with domestically produced renewable fuel. READ MORE

Related articles