Tag: Second generation biofuels

Europe risks losing out to the United States in the growing market for advanced biofuels without better regulation and clear policy signals, say leading members of the industry.

The European Union plans to impose a limit on the use of crop-based biofuels over fears they are less climate-friendly than initially thought and compete with food production, according to draft EU legislation.

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.

The European Commission has asked airlines to report on "the amount of biomass" they use so that biofuels can be accounted as "zero emission" in the greenhouse gas emissions reports they are requested to produce each year under the EU's carbon scheme for the aviation sector.

A fresh row has erupted in Brussels over the environmental benefits of biofuels, with academics and EU officials at loggerhead over how to account for CO2 savings in the product's life cycle.

Collecting agricultural residues could prove a lucrative business for Europe's farming sector if EU policy were to offer the right incentives for using biomass to produce biofuels.

Oil giants such as Shell and ExxonMobil are pouring millions of research funding into algae in the hope that the technology can solve environmental problems associated with intensive crop cultivation for biofuels. Raffaello Garofalo, executive director of the European Algae Biomass Association (EABA), outlines the potential and challenges of algae in an interview with EurActiv.

EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs met Brazil's energy minister in São Paulo last week (20 November) to discuss closer energy relations amid concerns from developing countries that EU calls for strict biofuel sustainability criteria could strangle global trade for plant-based fuels.

EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel has rejected allegations that EU policies to promote biofuels are to blame for rising food prices amid calls by the UN to "cut back significantly" on agrofuel support programmes.

The Commission's recent proposal to ban "bad" biofuels as part of its climate and energy package may benefit all parties and even the industry itself by "restoring some faith" in the much-critisised product, according to a January analysis from the Worldwatch Institute.

The EU's energy and agriculture commissioners have joined hands in defending the bloc's commitment to biofuels, following calls by a UK parliamentary committee for a moratorium on the promotion of the controversial alternative to fossil fuels. 

Biofuels and other alternative fuels have huge potential to help reduce energy consumption and meet sustainability objectives in the transport sector, particularly for aviation, according to a World Energy Council (WEC) study.