Europe's green groups favor waste-ag/forestry fuels over biodiesel

Diesel Fuel News, June 10, 2002

The European Commission's proposal to force the blending of up to 5.75% of "biofuel" into gasoline and diesel by 2010 is a dumb idea, according to a new report by European Environmental Bureau, the principal environmental coalition advisor to the EC. Forcing the production of rapeseed (esterified for biodiesel) or sugar beets (for ethanol) or other industrial crops will cause more net environmental damage than is supposedly mitigated by such "green" fuel, the EEB found.

Biofuel in any case has such small volume potential as to make only trivial impact on Europe's oil import dependency, they said. RME biodiesel is "very inefficient" on CO2 reduction compared to biofuels from waste forestry residue. Cost is a big problem, too, as "CO2 saving is too costly in the case of biofuels" and compared to alternatives, "biofuels are one of the least cost-effective alternatives." More promising are "innovative technologies to convert organic waste from agriculture and forestry production into biofuels, rather than to rely on biofuels from intensively farmed crops." Unfortunately, the proposed EC biofuel tax breaks are reserved for the wrong feedstocks. "Vegetable oils should therefore in principal not be eligible for reductions in excise duty," EBB says. Rather, waste farm/forestry products converted to biogas, pyrolysis oils or alt-fuels such as DME should get tax breaks. The greens also favor wider investment in public vehicle transport, plus rail and water transport, in order to cut total transport CO2 emissions at lower consumer cost. Europe's greens have been much more active in the biofuel debate than have similar groups in the U.S.