MPs committee says Government must enforce sustainability standards before pushing biofuels
Mon 21 January 2008
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The Environmental Audit Committee has called for a moratorium on biofuels targets until robust sustainability standards and mechanisms to prevent damaging land use change are enforced. The cross-party MPs' verdict followed another report critical of biofuels policy from the Royal Society as well as a leaked internal document from the Joint Research Council of the European Union.
Although it recognises that some biofuels are sustainable and can be used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport, the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) says that without robust standards producing some biofuels could lead to environmental damage in the UK and the destruction of environmentally important rainforests. The Committee urges the Government to ensure that biofuels policy balances greenhouse gas cuts with wider environmental impacts so that biofuels contribute to sustainable emission reductions.
The EAC also concludes that biofuels are generally an expensive and ineffective way to cut greenhouse gas emissions when compared to other policies. Emissions from road transport can be cut cost-effectively and with lower environmental risk, the Committee says, by implementing a range of other policies.
In response to criticism of European biofuels policy levelled by the UK's EAC, the EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs said he "strongly disagreed" with the Committee's conclusions, according to a report in ENDS. EU biofuel policy is delivering significant greenhouse gas reductions, and the new EU rules will promote "only sustainable biofuels", he said.
The EAC report followed criticism of EC biofuels policy from the Commission's own Joint Research Centre (JRC) which has been widely reported in the media. The JRC's working paper says that the pursuit of the EU's mandatory 10 per cent target for biofuels is likely to have a high net cost, will require large amounts of land outside of Europe to deliver and that it is also uncertain whether the policy will make any greenhouse gas savings at all.
The Royal Society also published a report on biofuels earlier this month. The Society's working group concluded that biofuels have a potentially useful role in tackling the issues of climate change and energy supply. However, they said, existing policy frameworks and targets may mean that opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and ensure wider environmental and social benefits are missed.
The Royal Society called for the introduction of 'appropriate policies and economic instruments "to avoid the risk of getting locked into inefficient biofuel supply chains that potentially create harmful environmental and social impacts".
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