Les producteurs de biocarburants dénoncent la réduction des objectifs

Green MEP  and rapporteur on the directive Claude Turmes, who had originally called for mandatory biofuels targets to be scrapped entirely, commented on the vote: "While the maintenance of a binding target for biofuels is a bitter pill to swallow, the committee has at least strengthened the safeguards against the damaging impacts of agro-fuels in this directive.” 

"Crucially", he welcomed the inclusion of a "major review to take place in 2014, which will mean the 10% target can be reassessed if it is proving damaging" as well as the strengthening of the sustainability criteria. 

But the European Biodiesel Board has criticised the Turmes report for undermining the target by "chopping it to pieces", creating "misguided" quotas for electricity and hydrogen, which "are not renewable per se and much less sustainable".

"It is sad that legislators have been swayed by superficial arguments linking biofuels to food price rises," said the board's Secretary General Raffaello Garofalo, adding that a "regression" to a 4% target by 2015 meant the industry could effectively "dismantle over four million tonnes (the 1,5% difference) of its existing capacities”. 

“The economic damage to investments made in good faith by the EU biodiesel industry would be dramatic,” he stressed. Garofalo also slammed the sustainability criteria determined by the committee which it says “will have as a result to cut-off more than 80% of the biofuels produced in Europe, “strategically” favouring non-EU producers.” 

The European Bioethanol Fuel Association (eBIO) further criticised the vote for putting investment security at risk, stressing that “a stable investment climate is a pre-condition to reduce greenhouse gas emissions further and to develop more advanced biofuels”. 

“The Parliament puts at risk over 5 billion euro invested in EU biofuel production capacity and all the employment linked to it,” said eBIO Secretary General Robert Vierhout, calling on the Commission and member states to “demonstrate a greater sense of reality”. 

But NGOs  say the vote marks a “welcome step in the right direction”, notably due to the major review planned in 2014, the strict sustainability criteria and the increased focus on electric and hydrogen vehicles. But many continue to believe that the 10% target be dropped entirely, arguing that "unsustainable biofuels have no place in a clean renewable energy mix". 

Adrian Bebb, agrofuels campaign coordinator for green NGO Friends of the Earth (FoE)  said: “Using crops to feed cars is a false solution to our climate problems and could lead to irreversible loss of wildlife and misery for millions of people in the South.” 

Oxfam  agreed that MEPs should have "gone further by dropping biofuels from the renewable energy directive altogether”, although it conceded that the review clause was “especially important given the links identified between biofuels and escalating food prices”. 

“It is now up to member states to follow the Parliament's lead and to place the needs of poor people and the environment before those of powerful industrial and agricultural lobbies, rather than seek to water down the MEPs’ proposals,” it stressed.