Fresh Warnings Against EU Bio-Fuels Policy

By Julio Godoy Reprint | | Print |

Julio Godoy

VIENNA, Nov 10 2010 (IPS) - Massive increase in carbon emissions will worsen climate change if the European Union does not urgently revise its energy policy, experts warn.

The EU plan to increase its share of bio-fuels to 20 percent by the year 2020 constitutes a major mistake, according to a new study released Nov. 11 in Brussels by the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP). The study warns of damaging ecological and socio-economic consequences of the policy.

The IEEP report says the new policy will increase greenhouse gas emissions and endanger food security and agricultural jobs. In developing countries, particularly in Africa, it warns that corn and other sustenance plantations will be crowded out and replaced with oil palm and other resources used for production of bio-fuels.

The EU’s April 2009 directive on “the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources” popularly known as the “second renewables directive”, is aimed at reducing emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane that are believed to cause atmospheric warming. The directive sets a mandatory 10 percent minimum share of bio-fuels in petrol and diesel by 2020.

The directive requires that “increasing worldwide demand for bio-fuels and bio-liquids, and the incentives for their use…should not have the effect of encouraging the destruction of bio-diverse lands.” But the new study, titled ‘Anticipated Indirect Land Use Change Associated with Expanded Use of Biofuels in the EU’ says the environmental and social consequences of bio- fuel production may be worse than expected, and concludes that the EU should urgently revise its renewable energy policies.

The report finds that for the targeted bio-fuel production an area more than twice the size of Belgium – some 69,000 square kilometres – will need to be converted into fields and plantations, putting forests, natural ecosystems, and poor communities in danger. Such land use change would bring an increase in emissions, the report warns.

“Even when the GHG (greenhouse gases) emission savings required under the EU sustainability requirements for bio-fuels are taken into account, rather than aiding climate change mitigation up to 2020, the increased use of bio- fuels would lead to additional GHG emissions,” Catherine Bowyer, senior policy analyst at the IEEP and author of the report, told IPS.

“As a consequence, the use of these additional conventional bio-fuels could not be considered to contribute to the achievement of EU climate change policy goals,” she said.

According to Bowyer’s analysis, taking emissions savings into account, between 273 and 564 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) for the period 2011 to 2020, or between 27 and 56 MtCO2e annually, would arise from additionally from land use change.

“This would be equivalent to between 12 and 26 million additional cars on the road across Europe in 2020,” Bowyer said. According to the report, the EU second renewable directive would lead to between 80.5 percent and 167 percent more emissions.

The IEEP report relied on national renewable energy action plans (REAP) submitted by 23 EU member states to the European Commission. These plans specify how the EU member states intend to fulfil the body’s second renewables directive. Britain plans to import up to 90 percent of its bio-fuel from African and other developing countries.

“In Africa, we expect to see prices of food increase due to the new production of bio fuels,” Chris Coxon, Brussels-based spokesperson for ActionAid International, an anti-poverty organisation, told IPS in a telephone interview. “Small farmers, typical of the local agriculture in most sub-Saharan African countries who now supply food to their local communities, will be crowded out by bio-fuels.

“The EU plans effectively give companies a blank cheque to continue grabbing land from the world’s poor to grow bio-fuels to fill our tanks rather than food to fill their stomachs,” Coxon warned.