EU shouldn’t use imports to achieve biofuels target
A leading spokesman for Europe's bioethanol industry has questioned the reasoning behind the European Commission's strategy to ensure that biofuels are produced sustainably.
Vassilis Spiliopoulos, president of the European Union of Ethanol Producers (UEPA), suggested in an interview with Europolitics Transport magazine published earlier this month, that one of the drivers behind the Commission’s proposals was that it wants to import biofuels from outside the EU.
He then went on to question why the Commission wanted to import biofuels in the first place, when there was already enough production capacity within the EU.
EU grown crops could account for eleven percent of biofuels
Do it yourself
When asked about the proposed environmental sustainability criteria, Spiliopoulos replied that, “these criteria are above all imposed because the EU wants to import part of its biofuel consumption, but we must remember that the European Commission clearly established that the EU could achieve 11 per cent of sustainable biofuels by 2020 without importing or competing with the food sector. The EU could easily, as of today, produce and consume sustainable bioethanol which would allow it to reduce its CO2 emissions and its energy dependence.”
Concerns
The EU Commission proposed its stringent environmental sustainability criteria in January this year, in order to meet concerns about the sustainability of biofuel production. The criteria state that biofuels must achieve greenhouse gas savings of at least 35 per cent compared to oil. Furthermore they must respect a number of requirements related to biodiversity, land use and production techniques.
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