EU’s biofuels U-turn is final nail in coffin of Irish sugar

When it was enacted in 2009, the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive was seen as a progressive step towards meeting Europe’s climate change targets, writes Dick Roche.

The directive — which provided that by 2020 at least 10% of EU transport sector energy must come from renewable sources — opened the prospect of repeating in Europe the ‘quiet revolution’ in rural investment and jobs that that the US witnessed from its ethanol policy.

The ink on the Renewable Energy Directive was barely dry when, in 2012, the European Commission proposed in a drastic policy U-turn to cut the target from 10% to to 5% of transport energy.