EU undecided on standards for cleaner fuels[fr][de] 

According to the EU executive, the revision of the Fuel Quality Directive should prevent some 500 million tonnes of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere, notably by encouraging the use of biofuels. But disagreement is rife among stakeholders and within the European Parliament over key elements of the proposed text. 

Dutch Socialist MEP Dorette Corbey, who is in charge of steering the proposal through Parliament, wants to amend the Commission's text so as to include legally binding criteria on how biofuels should be made – a move that she says is essential to avoid increased investments in environmentally harmful biofuels that provoke food price hikes, deforestation and water shortages. 

But, during a debate in the Parliament's Environment Committee on 13 September, MEPs from the centre-right EPP-ED group said the fuel quality directive was the wrong place to impose such "sustainability criteria", as it would conflict with similar rules currently being drawn up by the Commission for a separate Directive on the promotion of biofuels due in December. 

As for the target of reducing life-cycle fuel emissions by 10% by 2020, no MEP objected outright, although doubts remained as to the need for a life-cycle approach, because 85% of fuel emissions in fact come from fuel use rather than production. 

This view is shared by oil industry aassociation Europia, which insists that the 10% goal in Article 7a be scrapped. 

It points out that oil producers and refineries already fall under the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme and that this provides a sufficient guarantee that they will strive to achieve lesser carbon dioxide emissions, without the need for binding legislation. 

Europia also explains that the life-cycle approach would put highly-upgraded refineries, capable of more complex conversion techniques, at a disadvantage because they are often more energy-intensive, and would ultimately create a "perverse incentive" for the incomplete and inefficient conversion of crude oil. 

According to Dutch Socialist MEP Dorette Corbey, Parliament rapporteur  on the issue, the law must include criteria ensuring that the biomass used to produce biofuels is "at least partly traceable", and has not been planted near nature areas or protected sites, and does not lead to deforestation or water shortages. 

While she acknowledges existing Commission moves to draw up sustainability criteria as part of the future Biofuels Directive, she stresses that these do not yet exist and that separate criteria are needed in the meantime to prevent the life-cycle reduction obligation causing unsustainable biofuel production. 

"This Directive will provide a massive incentive for biofuels. But because the Commission has not yet put its own sustainability criteria on the table, the European Parliament has no other choice than to give its own guidelines," she told EurActiv, adding: "It would have been better if the Commission had first of all drawn up sustainability criteria and then the carbon dioxide target." 

As regards claims that the life-cycle reduction is incompatible with the EU’s emissions-trading scheme, she stressed: "The ETS only provides an incentive to reduce carbon dioxide and does not impose any absolute obligation. Oil companies can, after all, decide to purchase emission rights on the commercial market. Both the ETS and the Directive now under consideration provide incentives: neither of them actually imposes a requirement to improve efficiency at refineries. In other words, they reinforce each other and at least do not conflict." 

EPP-ED MEP María del Pilar Ayuso however replied to Corbey's report, saying: "We are not in favour or against [sustainability criteria] but this is not the right place. We should stick to the subject of the proposal." 

The European Petroleum Industry Association Europia stressed the inconsistency between, on the one hand, promoting higher quality fuels and biofuels, which require more energy-intensive refining processes, and on the other, the introduction of a life-cycle greenhouse gas mitigation approach. 

It noted that the target of achieving an annual 1% reduction of fuels' life-cycle emissions was "premature" and called for it to be deferred until an appropriate methodology for calculating full cycle greenhouse gas emissions, which "resolves the potential overlap with the ETS and assesses the feasibility of a reduction target in line with the upcoming Renewables Directive as well as business, economic and social impacts". 

Car manufacturers, on the other hand, welcomed the life-cycle approach. "The focus of the Commission is still far too much on vehicle technology," the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) Communications Director Sigrid de Vries has said, adding it is "important that the fuel industry takes part" in reducing transport emissions. 

Green transport NGO T&E urged MEPs to back the plan, terming it an "ingenious climate measure" and saying its measures could "make a big contribution to reducing demand for bad oil".