{"id":4885,"date":"2011-07-09T13:58:38","date_gmt":"2011-07-09T17:58:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.energyrefuge.com\/blog\/?p=4885"},"modified":"2017-09-05T17:50:35","modified_gmt":"2017-09-05T21:50:35","slug":"europe-reassesses-biodiesel-policies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.energyrefuge.com\/blog\/europe-reassesses-biodiesel-policies\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe Reassesses Biodiesel Policies"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Via Mongabay<\/figcaption><\/figure>A new study by the European Union says any benefits of biodiesel production are cancelled out by the indirect impact caused by its production. As a consequence, the EU is likely to seriously revise its policy for biodiesel fuel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Currently there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a mandate in the EU that by 2020 10 per cent of all road fuels should be biofuel, up from less than three per cent at the moment.<\/p>\n

A change in policy would in practice mean the demise of a booming industry that has thrived since the introduction of the biofuel policy back in 2003. It is now worth $13 billion, according to a Reuters report<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Concerns over food prices and deforestation through burning are two of the main reasons that biofuels have fallen from grace and are no longer being seen as a silver bullet for emissions mitigation.<\/p>\n

The findings of the Commission will not surprise environmental organizations that for long have been warning about the negative side effects of biofuel production.<\/p>\n

In a report from last October, I wrote that the Ecosystems Climate Alliance, an alliance of NGOs committed to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153keeping natural terrestrial ecosystems intact and their carbon out of the atmosphere\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, warned that zero-emission bioenergy is a myth<\/a>. <\/p>\n

It blamed the loopholes in LULUCF\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s (Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry) accounting rules for the misconception. <\/p>\n

At the time Alistair Graham, of the Humane Society International, told me: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The debate rarely dwells upon the almost inevitable fact that that patch of ground would have grown vegetation anyway – whether as agriculture, forestry or a natural ecosystem – that’s just what naturally happens. <\/p>\n

“So the growing of biomass is not ‘additional’ – the vegetation growth would have happened anyway. This argument does seem to be getting some traction in the guise of concern over the displacement of cropland away from growing food – especially food security issues in developing countries, subsistence communities”.<\/p>\n

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