EU’s 2030 Climate and Energy Objectives Will Be Missed without Biofuels

by Peder Holk Nielsen (Novozymes/EurActiv) If Europe is serious about its climate commitments, and if Europe wants to reduce its dependence on imported oil, then we need to increase the amount of low-carbon biofuels in the energy mix, writes Peder Holk Nielsen.

... Today, the European transport sector is 95% reliant on oil, most of which is imported from outside the EU. This is expensive. In 2014, the 28 member states spent more than €270 billion on foreign crude – the combined GDP of Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

It also comes at an environmental cost. The transport sector accounts for almost one quarter of the EU’s total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Road transport specifically represents 80% of all transport emissions.

Europe is reducing its emissions, but not in the transport sector where emissions have only declined since the start of the economic crisis in 2008 and may rise again with the economic recovery and low oil prices. It is broadly agreed that emissions from transport will need to fall sharply in the next decade in order to meet the EU’s agreed objective of a 60% reduction by 2050 and in order to allow the EU to reach its overall decarbonisation goals.

... (I)n all scenarios – even the most optimistic ones – the majority of vehicles on the road in 2030 will have a combustion engine and run on liquid fuels, the vast majority of which will be oil-derived, unless the EU takes action. Alternative low-carbon liquid fuels such as biofuels are therefore badly needed if we are serious about addressing the transport emissions challenge.

Five years of policy debate around ILUC (Indirect Land Use Change) has created a high level of uncertainty which paralysed investments in the sector. Now that this debate has been closed, we need to recover the time lost and adopt new policies that clearly support the uptake of the best performing biofuels, such as renewable ethanol, for which the scientific consensus keeps confirming they are sustainable.

European renewable ethanol reduces GHG emissions by 60% on average compared to gasoline.

Finally, advanced biofuels based on waste and residues such as cellulosic ethanol are becoming commercially available, too, and their positive impact is significant, with an average 80 to 90% GHG reduction. READ MORE