EU in quandary over biofuels
European Commission investigations have indicated that EU policies to promote use of biofuel could indirectly affect a global land area the size of Denmark, over the next decade.
What happens is that a European farmer grows a crop of rapeseed, wheat, corn or sugar beet, not for food, for production of ethanol or biodiesel.
That removes some food from the global market, so somebody somewhere in the world will go hungry — unless the missing tonnes of grain, for example, are grown elsewhere.
If they are grown on new farmland created by cultivating natural forests or grassland (which store carbon dioxide), vast quantities of climate-warming greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions previously held in these areas are pumped into the atmosphere — enough to cancel any of the claimed climate benefits which justify use of biofuels in the EU.
The European Commission is in a quandary over how to factor in these unknown and near immeasurable “indirect land use change” effects of its biofuel policy, but says it will take six months to research it further, before making proposals.
Hopefully, the world will not burn up in those six months.
Experts who have looked at the commission’s latest findings on this complex topic say it will be hard to defend the EU’s existing mandatory targets by 2020 — such as 10% of EU road transport fuels to be biofuels by 2020.
Biofuels, at least a quarter of which were imported, mainly from Brazil and the US, made up 3.4% of EU transport fuel consumption in 2008.
It was hoped that the EU would eventually use at least €12bn of biofuels per year. But Alan Matthews, Professor of European Agricultural Policy in the Department of Economics, Trinity College, has examined the commission’s latest figures, and believes the 10% renewables in transport fuels target must be postponed at least, if not scrapped — because the vast majority of current biofuels cause too much GHG emissions, if you include “indirect land use change”.
Big business seems to agree, with investment in European biofuels slowing to a halt.
In Germany, the coalition government elected in late 2009 had planned to revive the biofuels industry. But it has frozen biofuels taxes rather than reduce them, and scaled back planned increases in blending levels.
Investment in biofuels is unlikely, while the EU dithers over the “indirect land use change” for at least the next 18 months (if decisions and laws are made at the usual EU pace). But there’s no other way to go about it, if the right decision is to be made.
EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard has made it clear the EU cannot ignore adverse “indirect land use change” impacts that may be caused globally by its biofuels policy.
The EU is similarly taking politically correct decisions in the related area of carbon leakage.
After 2012, it will give away multi-billion euro carbon permits to 164 manufacturing industries deemed to be at risk of “carbon leakage” — meaning that their production would shift out of the EU, and cause GHG emissions elsewhere, if EU GHG carbon permits would cost them too much money. Other manufacturers get only 80% of carbon permits free of charge.
On both the “indirect land use change” and “carbon leakage” fronts, it is challenging for the EU to do the politically correct thing. Against that background, the Irish government’s bid to position Ireland as a responsible country on climate change must be questioned.
Without a mention for either “indirect land use change” or “carbon leakage” in his 15-page document, Environment Minister John Gormley has published the Climate Change Response Bill 2010, on how he wants to reduce emissions by 40% by 2030 and 80% by 2050.
When the Bill comes to the Oireachtas, he will have to come up with convincing answers on how the targets can be achieved without the problem of GHG-emitting Irish economic activity simply being shifted to some other country.
