Biofuel : European Commission in the battle between "Renewable" and "Sustainable"

By JJB

Source

"Renewable" and "Sustainable" do not always go together. Even though biofuels are universally defined as renewable energy sources, they might, in some cases, turn out to be quite unsustainable. Crises of food prices are one example where biofuels have been accused by some NGOs of causing economic and humanitarian disasters. Others rather blamed several years' bad weather conditions for the 2007 food crisis (s. Vernier p. 88). But the general question of social acceptability of biofuels is not solved yet. The controversy goes on as biofuel production has recently been said to cause a humanitarian disaster to the native people of the Ethiopian Omo-valley, which is why the European Investment Bank and the World Bank withdrew their financial support.

But apart from the controversial issue of social damage, environmental damage might occur, too. The designation of biofuels can be misleading: it doesn't mean these fuels are necessarily perfectly eco-friendly. It only means that they were generated by agricultural (and therefore biological) production. Therefore, biofuels are renewable. But just as any other kind of agriculture, biofuel production might imply greenhouse gas emissions, decrease of biodiversity and intensive use of pollutants.
In this case, biofuels are not really environmentally sustainable, even though they are renewable.
It is true, though, that biofuel-plants capture CO2 during their growth before releasing it later, when being consumed as fuel. This is an advantage compared to crude oil, which cannot be reproduced as quickly as it is spent. This way, biofuel production recycles a certain part of its emissions, which cannot be done by fossil fuel production. Yet, this positive effect might not be sufficient to assure carbon neutrality for the entirety of biofuel processing and transport. And it doesn't solve the problem of biodiversity being threatened by biofuels, either.
Source: Jacques Vernier : Les énergies renouvelables. Cinquième édition mise à jour. Que sais-je? 18e mille. Presses universitaires de France, Paris, 2009. Page 88-90.


Therefore, apart from the alleged (but still controversial) social and economic damage caused by biofuels, negative impacts on nature could be expected, too, if there were no guidelines as to how biofuel production should take care of the environment. 

This kind of guideline is what the EU Commission wants to provide. According to Günther Oettinger, Commissioner for energy, the EU has "set the highest sustainability standards in the world" for biofuels. In deed, several Sustainability Schemes for biofuels have recently been recognised by the EU Commission. This step is considered as a very important contribution to set EU-wide standards for the definition of truly sustainable biofuels. The Sustainability Schemes were chosen by the European Commission out of numerous propositions, which had been submitted by private companies and institutions responding to an initiative of the Commission. These schemes can be used for certifying the sustainability of any biofuel producer on the European market (including imports). In order to obtain such a certification, an independent audit has to confirm the product chain's compliance with the Sustainability Scheme. Given that the entire product chain will be assessed, the audit will also examine whether natural areas of rich biodiversity (especially forests) have previously been destroyed for the sake of biofuel production. Another important aspect of the audit are greenhouse gas savings: biofuel production will have to emit 35% (50% in 2017 and 60% from 2018 on) less greenhouse gases than petrol production in order to meet the criteria of European sustainability certification. In fact, this is a direct consequence of the 2009 Renewable Energy Directive. The soil's capacity to absorb and stock greenhouse gases will also be evaluated (again, soils of high biodiversity such as forests might be protected this way). This might encourage the further development of highly soil-efficient biofuels. So-called second generation biofuels use for example wooden plants or different parts of plants, or they process plants like the Jatropha, which grows on soils of marginal arable quality (therefore not interfering with food production or biodiversity).

Overall, the European Union is moving closer towards a shared vision of what should define truly sustainable biofuels. However, national systems and standards will continue to exist and might offer an alternative to European recognition, even though their scope is evidently limited to member states.

Jatropha plants (Paraguay)