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.
