Call for EU to Stop Subsidies for Fossil Fuels to Help Bio-Based Materials Sector and the Circular Economy
by Liz Gyekye (BioMarket Insight) “Please stop all subsidies to fossil fuels. In 2016, €56 billion went from EU member states to fossil fuels.”
EU member states need to stop subsidising fossil fuels in order to help the bio-based materials industry, according to an industry expert. Roberto Ferrigno, EU Policy Advisor at Italian bio-plastics company Novamont, aired the latter views at a recent European Commission-backed ‘Circular Economy Stakeholder Conference’ in Brussels. He spoke on a panel with five other industry experts on a topic entitled ‘Policies to continue the transition: Towards circular industrial value creation networks’.
When asked by the host what one thing the next European Commission (@EU_Commission) and Parliament (@Europarl_EN) should do to encourage the transition to the circular economy, Ferrigno said that the EU should be “designing for sustainability” and designing for “safer chemicals and safer products”. He went on to say: “Please stop all subsidies to fossil fuels. In 2016, €56 billion went from EU member states to fossil fuels.”
Ferrigno said if subsidies were stopped for fossil fuels then it could also support the bio-based industry by making the cost of bio-materials cheaper than fossil fuel-based ones.
His answer also came off the back of a question asked by Kevin Gao, Communications Manager at Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s China programme, about the circular network for plastics packaging. Gao said that he was helping the Chinese government to develop a plastics strategy, which was due to be published by the end of this year
He said he had talked to the Chinese Packaging Federation, who had expressed concerns around the cost of bio-degradable plastics and maintained that the switch from conventional plastics to bio-degradable ones could increase costs by “four times” in China – “a cost that industry could not bear”. He asked the circular economy panel for a solution.
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Carbon tax
Elsewhere, Frans Timmermans (@TimmermansEU), First Vice-President of the European Commission, was also speaking at the circular economy conference, but gave the opening speech ahead of the panel debate.
“We need to urgently look at taxation. How is taxation supporting our efforts to go to a circular economy? It’s a big question. Do we need a CO2 tax at a European level? I think we probably do. We need to ensure that a tax system we use creates a feeling in society that this transition is being dealt with in a fair way.”
Separately, the European Commission has recently published a comprehensive report on the implementation of the Circular Economy Action Plan it adopted in December 2015. The report presents the main results of implementing the action plan and sketches out open challenges to paving the way towards a climate-neutral, competitive circular economy where pressure on natural and freshwater resources as well as ecosystems is minimised. READ MORE
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