Blow to biofuel plans
2008-01-18 19:53
Brussels - The European Commission has criticised EU proposals to boost the use of biofuels in transport, concluding that their costs outweigh the benefits, according to an internal document made available to AFP on Friday.
The unpublished working paper by the Joint Research Centre, the European Commission's in-house scientific body, makes uncomfortable reading for the EU's executive body ahead of a meeting on Wednesday where it is set to endorse a plan for biofuels to make up 10% of all transport fuels in the EU by 2020.
The cost-benefit study looks at whether using biofuels reduces greenhouse gas emissions, improves security of supply and creates jobs and delivers an unenthusiastic opinion on all three counts.
"What the cost-benefit analysis shows is that there are better ways to achieve greenhouse gas savings and security of supply enhancements than to produce biofuels," says the report.
"The costs of EU biofuels outweigh the benefits," the researchers state.
EU taxpayers would have to fork out an extra €33-65bn between now and 2020 if the European Commission proposals go ahead, according to the study.
The proposal will also require the use of huge swathes of land outside of Europe and the study questions whether it will make any greenhouse gas savings at all.
The report's authors caution that the study is a patchwork of information from other studies and that "many uncertainties still need to be reduced".
Nevertheless the findings are a blow to the Commission's plans for biofuels, which are part of a broader energy strategy to cut down on greenhouse gases to be unveiled on Wednesday.
The report concludes that by using the same EU resources of money and biomass, significantly greater greenhouse gas savings could be achieved by imposing only an overall biomass-use target instead of a separate one for transport.
Adrian Bebb, Agrofuels Campaign Co-ordinator for Friends of the Earth Europe, called it "a damning verdict on the EU's policy for using biofuels".
"The conclusions are crystal clear - the EU should abandon biofuels and use its resources on real solutions to climate change," he said of the leaked report.
The European Commission said on Monday it would propose tighter restrictions on biofuels next week amid mounting concerns that the energy source can cause unintended environmental and social problems.
"What we are going to propose are strict conditions that biofuels used in the European market are produced in a sustainable way," Commission spokesperson Ferran Tarradellas told journalists.
EU leaders have pledged to increase renewable energy use by 20% by 2020, compared to 1990 levels, with biofuels to make up 10% of all transport fuels used by then.
- SAPA