Biofuels: What is the EU doing?

Biofuel

What is the EU doing?

In December 2008, the EU adopted a new biofuel policy as part of the Renewable Energy Directive. This set a new mandatory target that 10% of energy needs in transport come from renewable sources by 2020. It also stipulates that the biofuels must be sustainable in order to gain qualifying status towards meeting the target.

However there is much uncertainty as to what a sustainable biofuel is. Most critically, the carbon accounting rules adopted in the Directive ignore the indirect land use change impacts of growing biofuels - and it is left unclear how exactly these rules will be corrected.

The European Commission is therefore currently preparing a series of new reports and proposals which should start clarifying exactly what a sustainable biofuel is.

Another question that has been left open in the Directive is that of the sustainability of solid biomass used for energy. Under the current rules bioenergy is considered to be carbon neutral.

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