Commission’s Flip-Flop on Biofuels Puts at Risk Tens of Thousands of Jobs
by Patrick Kent (Irish Cattle & Sheep Farmers’ Association/Euractiv) The key element of this renewable energy plan is that the ceiling for the crop biofuel component of EU transport fuels will be slashed from 7% to 3.8% by 2030. The ultimate objective of the Commission is to remove crop based biofuels from the picture altogether. This is really bad news for EU farmers already under pressure from declining commodity prices but it is also bad news for the environment and for those who believe that fact and scientific reason should underpin EU decision-making.
Worse still is that this demonstrates an incoherence in decision-making which is anathema to encouraging much needed investment at either farm or industrial level. Ten years ago, the Commission made it very clear that it was strongly supportive of biofuels and investors and farmers reacted accordingly. Now they have performed an astonishing U-turn.
The flip-flop approach to policy-making threatens the livelihoods of farmers and puts at risk tens of thousands of jobs across Europe. It will end investor interest in EU biofuels, with a direct knock-on effect on the efforts to revive the Irish sugar industry and it will make it harder to achieve EU targets to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from road traffic.
Perhaps the most ludicrous aspect of the direction the Commission is taking the EU is that the problem which it is trying to solve – the upsurge in palm oil imports into Europe – has nothing to do with European farmers and could be resolved if the Commission and the member states applied the sustainability criteria set out in EU law and adopted a more differentiated approach to biofuels than the simplistic approach now being advanced.
Of course, the backdrop to this U-turn in policy is the absurd notion which has been pushed by developmental NGOs that EU biofuel policy has been responsible for third world hunger.
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In almost every significant agricultural commodity in Europe, self-sufficiency levels are in excess of 100% and in some cases (butter, whole milk powder for instance) over 200%. The abundance of production is hitting farmers hard across Europe as prices fail to cover production costs and in the longer run this is the stand-out reason why so few young people are taking up careers in farming. (Only 6% of EU farmers were aged under 35 in 2013). Food security is not threatened by biofuels but by lack of profitability at primary producer level.
These facts highlight the bogus nature of the fuel vs. food argument. Europe is producing too much food for its own markets and struggling to find viable markets internationally.
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ILUC turns out to be much more relevant to the importation of palm oil and soya (as a protein source) from outside the EU.
Contrary to the ludicrous notion that forests will be levelled and bogs drained, crop-based biofuels can fill multiple roles from each hectare grown. A hectare used for biofuels still produces top class animal feed as a by-product of the fuel production process.
As an additional bonus, the by-product feed is higher in protein and thus reduces the need for soya imports from South America. In truth, it is the over-dependence on soya imports that is the real cause of forest destruction, albeit in South America.
There is no credible evidence of struggling farmers in Europe making totally uneconomic investments to reclaim forest or bog to produce animal feeds for livestock systems that are barely viable in 2016.
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The logic behind the initial drive towards biofuels – to reduce dependency on fossil fuels – has not changed and in fact, now more than ever Europe needs to become more self-sufficient in energy at a time of increased geopolitical instability particularly in the big energy exporting regions.
The only people who will be delighted with this are the fossil fuel oil companies and the palm oil importers, neither of whom are solving the problems of underemployment in rural Europe or the lack of viability for European farmers. Sustainable crop-based biofuels provide a win-win in Europe and it beggars belief that these EU Commission proposals could be supported at EU Council or Parliament level. READ MORE
