July 7, 2008
EU acknowledges biofuel plan emerged through misinterpretation
EU energy ministers said at an informal meeting Saturday (July 5, 2008) they had been labouring for 18 months under the false impression that an EU plan to fight global warming included an obligation to develop biofuels.
The admission by policymakers in Brussels comes at a time when the image of biofuels has shifted from climate savior to climate pariah.
Since January 2007, the EU have aimed to have 10 percent of all fuel powering vehicles to come from plants by 2020.
A closer reading of the texts by the ministers apparently revealed otherwise.
"The member states realized that the Commission's plan specifies that 10 percent of transport needs must come from renewable energy, not 10percent from biofuels," Jean-Louis Borloo, the French environment and energy minister, said at the close of the three-day gathering.
Jurgen Homann, the junior economy and energy minister from Germany, also confirmed the misconception.
The ministers "discovered" that requirements for transport "do not speak of biofuels, but renewables," he told AFP.
The majority of biofuels produced in the world today are extracted from corn in the US, sugar in Brazil, and both grain and oilseed crops in Europe.
An unpublished World Bank report blamed biofuels for a 75-percent rise in the price a basket of staple food items, the UK's Guardian newspaper reported Friday.
The new reading of the EU "action plan" for energy and climate policy immediately raises the question of what - if anything - will replace biofuels in fulfilling the 10percent transport requirement by 2020 for renewable energy.
Currently, 99.9 percent of the renewable fuel now available for vehicles is biofuel.
However, a shift is already underway towards "second generation" biofuels made from non-food sources such as switchgrass and wood byproducts, Borloo said.
Biofuels may still be in their infancy but they are growing rapidly, with annual production leaping by double digits, experts say.
