Environmental Committee rules in favour of Decline in European Biofuel Production

EU biofuel policy – Decline with notification

Berlin, 11.07.2013 – The compromise reached today in the Environmental Committee of the European Parliament severely jeopardises the prospects of German and European biodiesel production in the view of the Union zur Förderung von Oel- und Proteinpflanzen e.V. (UFOP). The UFOP regards the restriction in biofuels from cultivated biomass to max. 5.5 percent of the final energy consumption in the transportation sector as catastrophic. Retaining the double apportionment of biofuels from waste oils and the share of renewable electricity in the transport sector to a 5.5 percent cap will considerable restrict the quantity requirement for biofuels of the first generation to such an extent that further insolvencies are foreseeable.

The ruling is a summons to international vegetable oil business to depart from the sustainability requirements and seek new sales markets without sustainability certification. Considering the question of indirect land use change (iLUC) by way of reporting is untenable in view of the absence of a scientific basis certified by experts. For the UFOP, the meaning of such reporting must be called into question, as iLUC factors will not protect a single hectare of rainforest. The Committee should rather have obliged the Commission to ensure measures to protect virgin forest by way of bilateral negotiations as quickly as possible. As a result, only the hope of a better result during the consultations in the plenary session of the European Parliament in the autumn of this year remains for the European biofuel industry.