Tag: ILUC

Biofuels industry attacks on the scientific rigour and methodology of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) are unfair and fall wide of the mark, writes Peter Wooders.

The bioethanol industry should stop defending wasteful public subsidies and join forces with NGOs to fight for the full carbon accounting which it says would vindicate its environmental record, argues Jos Dings.

On 11th July, the Environment Committee of the European Parliament voted in favour of accounting for scientifically proven ‘indirect emissions’ (known as ILUC) from European biofuels. This type of accounting is the best available option to reduce negative climate impacts from biofuels, says Chris Malins.

As the European Union seeks to address whether biofuels production increases greenhouse gas emissions and whether to tackle the issue by including indirect land use change (ILUC) factors in the environmental assessments, it has ignored the fact that ILUC can neither be observed nor measured and is therefore not a scientifically robust  solution, says Matthias Finkbeiner.

By effectively decreasing the ambition of its biofuels policy, as currently debated in the European Parliament and the Council, the EU walks away from concerns without solving them, writes Carlo Hamelinck.

EXCLUSIVE / Biofuels companies and associations sent EU cabinet members three e-mails an hour, many containing catastrophic warnings, in the run-up to a recent European Commission proposal to account for greenhouse gas emissions that the fuel crops might indirectly cause.

Several European ministers are blocking the EU’s proposal to curb the use of conventional biofuels, while some dispute claims the demand for crop-based oils drives deforestation and food insecurity in other parts of the world.

When fossil resources will have practically all been depleted, there will simply be no alternative to bioplastics, argues Hasso von Pogrell. But at the moment, they remain a niche market, despite the rapid increase in production of plant-based bottles.

European biofuel mandates are unlikely to deliver a significant reduction and could even increase greenhouse gas emissions unless land use factors are considered, says a study by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT).

An extraordinary ‘orientation meeting’ between the European Union's 27 commissioners has instructed the EU executive's energy and climate departments to sit down and jointly draft a legal proposal addressing indirect land use changes (ILUC) caused by the biofuels industry.