The European Commission's Energy Directorate, headed by Andris Piebalgs, set its sights long ago on the development of first-generation biofuels in the EU. (We at ET, along with a good many others, brought contrary arguments in the Public Consultation on Biofuels in 2006, see this index on biofuels, but to no avail.)  As the Commission's line hardened, setting a target of 5% of "renewables" in transport fuel consumption for 2015 and 10% for 2020, criticism of biofuels using food crops as feedstock grew around the world. They were seen as offering insufficient gain compared to petroleum-based fuels, from the point of view of energy balance (too much energy required to produce them) and from the point of view of GHG (essentially CO2) emissions. It was also pointed out that they would divert prime arable land to fuel from food production; as world food markets tightened and prices rose, this became a killer argument, biofuels being held (rightly or wrongly, in my view a bit of each) responsible for the squeeze.

There was increasing talk of the EU downscaling its 10% target. In March 2008:

EurActiv.com - EU signals possible retreat on biofuels | EU - European Information on Transport & Services

An EU-wide target to boost the use of biofuels in European transport could be revised due to fears of intolerable hikes in food prices, mass deforestation and water shortages, it emerged from statements made after the Spring Summit.

While no decision was taken at this year's summit, Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, said: "We're not excluding the possibility that we'll have to amend or revise our goals."

The target of raising the share of biofuels in transport from current levels of 2% to 10% by 2020 was agreed this time last year by EU leaders themselves. It was initially considered a good means of incentivising governments and industry to invest in biofuels, in order to reduce Europe's dependency on imported oil and contribute to the fight against climate change.

Yet a plethora of studies and impact assessments produced by various sources in the past year have raised the alarm, namely that increasing biofuel production to these levels based on current technologies - which mainly involve transforming food and feed crops into fuels - could have more negative consequences for the environment than positive ones.

In July, the European Parliament's Environment Committee almost unanimously voted a report by Green MEP Claude Turmes (Lux), placing severe restrictions on the Commission's targets. Immediate reaction from Commission Energy spokesman Ferran Tarradellas, in an email to journalists:

EurActiv.com - MEPs seek to cut biofuel goal in clash with Commission | EU - European Information on Transport & Services

"It is important that you note that this is NOT the official opinion of the European Parliament,"

Tarradellas went on to explain that the important committee was Industry and Energy, that would give its opinion in September. Unfortunately for the Commission, when September came, the Industry and Energy Committee voted in support of the Turmes report (a wide-ranging report on the future of renewables) which, while backing the 5% by 2015 and 10% by 2020 targets:

EurActiv.com - Biofuel-makers denounce target downgrade | EU - European Information on Transport & Services

nevertheless specifies that at least 20% of the 2015 target and 40% of the 2020 goal must be met from "non-food and feed-competing" second-generation biofuels or from cars running on green electricity and hydrogen.

This shift away from agro-fuels has been hailed by NGOs. But biofuel producers are angered that the new text effectively translates into a mere 4% biofuel target by 2015 - marking a regression compared to the goal of 5.75% by 2010 that the EU set itself back in 2003 and based on which the industry has already made heavy and irreversible investments.

Strict sustainability rules 

The Turmes report also specifies that traditional first-generation biofuels, made from crops such as sugar, rapeseed or corn, would only count towards the target if they meet strict sustainability criteria. This includes social sustainability criteria, including respect for the land rights of local communities or the fair remuneration of all workers, as well as an obligation for biofuels to offer at least 45% carbon emission savings compared to fossil fuels - a figure that would rise to 60% in 2015.

This set off a reaction within days, as Euractiv goes on to report:

EurActiv.com - EU faces pressure from overseas biofuel-makers | EU - European Information on Trade & Industry

Such a move would clearly put a dent in the growth of the agrofuel market coveted by producers in Brazil, Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as European farming nations.

Brazil, notably, is already heavily committed to agrofuel production as the world's largest exporter of ethanol made from sugar cane. The country is angry that the EU has been swayed by claims that agrofuels are to blame for recent rises in food prices and for plunging millions into poverty and starvation.

According to former Agriculture Minister Roberto Rodrigues, the fact that sugar cane plantations are eating up farmland while at the same time, Brazil produced more crops and beef than ever before last year, is proof that "there is not the least competition between sugar cane and food in Brazil"

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Malaysian Plantation Industries Minister Datuk Peter Chin and Indonesian Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono have just returned from a week-long trip to Brussels and various EU countries, where they engaged with government officials and MEPs in a bid to convince them of the virtues of palm oil.

For them, as for much of the European biofuel industry, the key issue will be the final life-cycle CO2 reduction requirement decided by the EU. Indeed, typically, biodiesel made from European-grown rapeseed results in a greenhouse gas saving of 44% while the typical figure for ethanol made from EU sugar beet is 48%. According to EU figures, palm oil biodiesel produced in countries like Malaysia and Indonesia typically offers much lower savings, ranging from 32-38%.

Speaking at a World Sustainable Palm Oil Conference on 16 September, Chin insisted that their palm oil was already subjected to international sustainability criteria and the EU should not impose another level of certification. He further lashed out at the data methodology the EU used to calculate CO2 savings, saying they "result in an unfair disadvantage for palm oil-based biodiesel, understating typical CO2 emission savings by at least 20%". The Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC) further stressed: "Certified sustainable palm oil is available in Malaysia. We trust that the EU will allow us to bring it to the European market."

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while Apriyantono does not deny that forests are being cleared for oil palm plantations, he highlights the relative size of the damage compared to the benefits of employing millions of people. "It's only a small proportion," he said, according to the Jakarta Post, saying that of the 133 million hectares of forests cleared in his country, oil palm plantations accounted for just 6.3 million hectares. "We should choose between human interests or those of the monkeys."

Let's note the Brazilian sidestepping of a major sustainability issue (if there is "no competition" between food and sugar cane, it's the environment that pays the price in terms of intensification of agricultural practices and deforestation), and the Malaysian's pretence that deforestation is only bad news for monkeys and is otherwise in "human interests". There's an obvious concern about sustainability criteria closing the EU market, and it spills over into the points I bolded: higher requirements for GHG emission savings bother the Malaysians and Indonesians because palm oil only just squeaked in on the Commission's proposed requirement of 35% GHG savings, and, on Parliament's proposal of 45%, later 60%, would be excluded.

As for the European agro-industry, ... for much of the European biofuel industry, the key issue will be the final life-cycle CO2 reduction requirement decided by the EU. That's not surprising when you see the figure given for rapeseed (44%), and, though calculations vary, those for maize, wheat, and sugar beet are unlikely to pass the new test of 45% savings.

A political agreement for all this is expected in Council for 8 December, so time is short.

So now, the Commission is apparently introducing new, more generous, technical standards on carbon emissions. I say "apparently" because nothing has been published. Only journalists from EUObserver and Reuters have, they say, seen draft language prepared by the Commission for discussions on the final Renewables Directive. The basis for it is said to be new work from the Commission's own scientists, (Joint Research Committee), and industry specialists, that show higher carbon emission savings thanks to greater efficiency in industrial processing. And suddenly EU agrifuels production looks like coming onside again: particular mention has been made of sugar beet.

There may indeed be greater carbon savings thanks to industrial efficiency, but the way this has been done, at the last minute, in hugger-mugger, with unpublished data made known by means of a targeted leak, smacks of an inside job under lobbying pressure.

EU biofuel data change angers environmentalists | Environment | Reuters

"The timing and lack of transparency surrounding these new figures raises serious questions about how the biofuel lobby has been able to influence the debate," said Nusa Urbancic of environment group T&E.

And there's another aspect:

EUobserver

Additionally, argues Nusa Urbancic, of Transport and Environment - a Brussels-based NGO - it is unfair that the commission include fresh, unpublished data that favours the European biofuels industry "at the drop of a hat while they continue to refuse to incorporate scientific paper after scientific paper on the far more profound impact of indirect land-use change."

Research, including the UK government's review of biofuels policies, increasingly shows that when land that would have been used to grow food or animal feed is now used to produce fuel, the additional emissions - a process known as "indirect land-use change" - far outweigh any greenhouse gas savings.

"It is right that the EU takes on board the latest science regarding greenhouse gas emissions from biofuel production," she added, "but the fact that the commission and council are still ignoring the absolutely critical issue of indirect land-use change shows that they are being selective about the science they take on board.

Carbon emissions are currently measured on the assumption that the biofuel feedstock is grown on land that is already cropland. This doesn't take into account the displacement effect when large quantities of crops are grown for fuel production. In order to make up the shortfall in food and animal feed, other land will be brought into use, including grassland and cleared forest, and/or crop/animal production will be intensified (the points the Brazilians were avoiding above). In other words, we get to strip-mining another layer of the periphery, with overall negative environmental effects, and, in particular, a worsened GHG emission balance sheet:

Biofuels Deemed a Greenhouse Threat - New York Times

The benefits of biofuels have come under increasing attack in recent months, as scientists took a closer look at the global environmental cost of their production. These latest studies, published in the prestigious journal Science, are likely to add to the controversy.

These studies for the first time take a detailed, comprehensive look at the emissions effects of the huge amount of natural land that is being converted to cropland globally to support biofuels development.

The destruction of natural ecosystems -- whether rain forest in the tropics or grasslands in South America -- not only releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when they are burned and plowed, but also deprives the planet of natural sponges to absorb carbon emissions. Cropland also absorbs far less carbon than the rain forests or even scrubland that it replaces.

Together the two studies offer sweeping conclusions: It does not matter if it is rain forest or scrubland that is cleared, the greenhouse gas contribution is significant. More important, they discovered that, taken globally, the production of almost all biofuels resulted, directly or indirectly, intentionally or not, in new lands being cleared, either for food or fuel.

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For instance, if vegetable oil prices go up globally, as they have because of increased demand for biofuel crops, more new land is inevitably cleared as farmers in developing countries try to get in on the profits. So crops from old plantations go to Europe for biofuels, while new fields are cleared to feed people at home.

Likewise, Dr. Fargione said that the dedication of so much cropland in the United States to growing corn for bioethanol had caused indirect land use changes far away. Previously, Midwestern farmers had alternated corn with soy in their fields, one year to the next. Now many grow only corn, meaning that soy has to be grown elsewhere.

Increasingly, that elsewhere, Dr. Fargione said, is Brazil, on land that was previously forest or savanna. "Brazilian farmers are planting more of the world's soybeans -- and they're deforesting the Amazon to do it," he said.

Fargione, one of the papers' lead authors, is quoted, in the same NYT article, as saying that the clearance of grassland releases 93 times the amount of greenhouse gas that would be saved by the fuel made annually on that land.

So for the next 93 years you're making climate change worse, just at the time when we need to be bringing down carbon emissions.

Back to the European Commission, apparently stubborn in its refusal to take on board justified criticism and modify its policy line. If the data don't fit, change the data? OK, so we'll have copious distribution of pork slices to EU agro-lobbies (sugar for example, and why not maize?), and we'll greenwash the need for the automobile industry to produce results on GHG emissions reduction, and we'll work with the petroleum industry in maintaining a fleet of oil-(with new added green)-powered vehicles...

And we'll still come up against the fact that we don't have the land surface in the EU to produce the biofuels target, and so we will import. In order to do so we will fudge the sustainability criteria and conveniently forget deforestation and indirect land-use change CO2. And, of course, we will also sit firmly on one of the main goals of the whole policy, which was to reduce dependence on foreign oil supplies. We'll still be dependent on foreign supplies, and paying a world market price that will track oil as it inevitably rises over the years to come.

Sounds like a great deal the Commission is cooking up for us there.