Brussels.18/02/2015 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament's environment committee will give its second reading vote on Tuesday 24 February to the draft directive amending the fuel quality and renewable energy directives to cap the use of agri-fuels in transport by 2020 and to take account of indirect land-use change (ILUC) in calculating greenhouse gas emissions linked to production of these first generation biofuels (see EUROPE 11235).
It is to Nils Torvalds (ALDE, Finland) that the Herculean task falls of pulling together the 374 amendments to come to acceptable compromises on ILUC factors, the cap for conventional biofuels and the target for advanced biofuels.
As debate rages in the Parliament, European agrifuel producers expressed their fears on Wednesday 18 February of seeing the many advantages they see in biofuels from agricultural produce. In a joint letter to the MEPs on the environment committee, Copa-Cogeca, EBB, Coceral, Fediol and EOA (European Oilseed Alliance) point out that: - putting a cap of less than 8% on the share of agrifuels in transport would wipe out the benefits of a sustainable and viable solution for decarbonising transport, improving energy security, reducing the EU's protein deficit for animal feed and stabilising the situation on agricultural markets; - the concept of ILUC should not be enshrined in the legislation “whilst there is no sound and consensual scientific basis on which to analyse the amplitude of this theoretical phenomenon”; - a separate target for advanced biofuels of more than 0.5% “is paramount. It must be binding and part of longer perspectives that go beyond 2020 in order to create a stable framework to enable investments and foster the sector's commercial development in parallel to biofuels made from arable crops”. (Aminata Niang)