Biofuels between science and EU politicians
Luc Vernet, a senior advisor at Farm Europe, a think tank specialising in EU agricultural affaires spoke to EURACTIV on a “third independent body” on the need for a third body between science an EU politicians. Beside others he addressed biofuels from agricultural feedstock.
According to Luc Vernet biofuels have been instrumentalised in the public debate. What is important is to go back to clear facts. In the short term emissions from the transport sector must be reduced and first generation biofuels, which were put in place in 2000 in Europe can offer a solution. Biofuels from agricultural feedstock came under attack mainly because of the food versus fuel debate. What happened to food production in Europe (not at a global level) had no negative impact on land use; on the contrary, it helped farmers to keep their profitability and to stay in business.
In Europe, the problem is not with an expansion of arable land, it is to keep agricultural land in production. European´s main land change is from agriculture to urbanisation or forest. And when we check food production, we managed in Europe to continue increasing our production and we did not increase our imports. So there was no negative impact on world markets because of the development of this activity in Europe.
There is one specific issue: during the last four to five years the main developments have not come from EU raw materials but from imports. So we have to make sure the debate in Europe goes down to facts and not ideology. We have a tool we developed for the last 15 years, and if we are to push for decarbonisation of the transport sector, we can keep this tool and in the future.
Source: Euractiv
Read more