May 30, 2008
In January, Friends of the Earth Europe (FOEE) and BirdLife International obtained a leaked report from the European Commission (EC) concerning the EU's proposal to establish a mandatory target of 10 percent for the use of biofuels in transport.
The leaked report allegedly reveals that the biofuels policy would have a net cost of EUR 65 billion, require enormous tracts of land outside of Europe, and might possibly result in zero savings of greenhouse gas emissions.
The EU's Joint Research Council (JRC), author of the report in question (Biofuels in the European Context), conducted a cost-benefit analysis to establish whether the use of biofuels (agrofuels) will lead to reduced greenhouse gas emissions, improved security of supply and job creation. The JRC came back with pessimistic results on all counts.
The report noted that the greenhouse effect of using nitrogen fertilisers is "significantly higher" than earlier estimates, and that deforestation, peat-land draining and grassland ploughing resulting from ramped-up biofuel production could potentially release enough GHGs to negate any possible reductions in emissions. Rather than investing greater quantities of biofuels, the report continued, the EU would be better off investing in additional oil reserve storing capacity to protect against short-term supply shocks. The report went on to claim that the missing part of the employment equation is that jobs created in the biofuel sector would merely be offset by job destruction in other sectors.
"Using the same EU resources of money and biomass, significantly greater [greenhouse gas] savings could be achieved by having [...] an overall target instead of a separate one for transport," the report concluded.
