EU could ban its own biofuels and be forced to import all fuels from poor countries

In a twist of irony, if the European Parliament and environmentalists have things their way, they could be banning the bulk of biofuels produced in Europe and the US, slow the fight against climate change, promote fossil fuels that pump out more emissions, and force the Union to import all its biofuels from countries like Brazil, Congo or Mozambique. The entire 10 per cent target. These are some of the consequences of a campaign not thought out all that well.

The Parliament wants biofuels to reduce greenhouse gas emissions minimally by 50 percent compared with fossil fuels. This means that a large number of 'first generation' fuels will not qualify as biofuels, even if they reduce emissions and help in the fight against climate change. The few that do, are cellulosic biofuels, which are not produced on a large scale yet, and fuels made from efficient tropical and subtropical crops. Almost none of the European or North American biofuels would meet the target.

Of course, almost all current biofuel production systems could greatly improve their GHG emissions reduction profile with relatively low-cost interventions. To cite just one example: if corn ethanol plants in the US were to use biomass co-generation instead of coal-based electricity or natural gas to power their production processes - as is done in Brazil's cane ethanol sector - they would slash off a significant bit of their emissions and the fuel would suddenly become considerably greener (earlier post). Many other of these efficiency and low carbon interventions can be readily applied; energy prices need to increase just a bit to make them commercially feasible.

Over the longer term, some biofuels - like biohydrogen - can even become carbon negative by coupling their production to carbon capture and storage (CCS). In that case, they would be taking CO2 out of the atmosphere. They would not merely be reducing emissions by 100%. They would go beyond that, yield 'negative emissions' and become the most radical tool in the fight against climate change. No other form of renewable energy - wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, hydro - can ever achieve this. These energy sources remain perpetually carbon neutral.

But let's not take these exciting future prospects into account - some impatient and shortsighted environmentalists refuse to look beyond today, so let us do the same, for the sake of this exercise. Let's stick to biofuels as they are currently produced, and to the legitimate critiques leveled against them.

Absurd consequences
In that case, the EP's high and arbitrary goal could have some very strange consequences that border on the absurd. The target would imply biofuels that reduce CO2 emissions by 49.9 per cent and thus contribute in a serious way to mitigating climate change, would be banned. Imagine a fuel that would be produced in a highly environmentally friendly manner (e.g. based on herbaceous crops that slow down erosion, restore soil health, reduce nitrogen runoff and enhance biodiversity), with the fuel cutting emissions almost in half. That would be a major feat and would obviously be promoted by any rational and environmentally conscious human being. Well, for the EP and some environmentalists, such a fuel wouldn't be good enough and it would be excluded.

More logical would be to demand that a biofuel reduces emissions - plain and simple. Even if the fuel reduces CO2 by only 5%, it would still help in the fight against climate change. And all help, no matter how small, is welcome, or so we are told in other contexts.

When a low target is set - say 5%, that is, the fuel still combats climate change - a very wide range of fuels would be allowed on the market, and a flourishing biofuels industry would emerge, with many vehicles utilizing it - all contributing their bit to fighting global warming. But the EP chooses another logic: only to allow a very small number of fuels that reduce emissions radically. It is not clear which of the two strategies is the smartest, but chances are that with the EP's proposal, the EU will not see the development of a biofuels industry at all for the coming two decades, and would thus be forced to keep utilizing only fossil fuels. That would be a disastrous and absurd consequence of this high target, demanded by people who call themselves green.

This is why the European Commission is likely to propose a more rational emissions goal for biofuels - in the order of a reduction of 25 per cent. The graph shows which fuels would survive under both targets. Note that there are many different lifecycle analyses of biofuels, all coming to different conclusions with regard to the carbon balance. We took a study that is widely considered to be one of the most stringent and comprehensive ones: "A Life Cycle Assessment of Energy Products: Environmental Impact Assessment of Biofuels" (*.pdf: German, French, English), authored by Rainer Zah, Heinz Böni, Marcel Gauch, Roland Hischier, Martin Lehmann, and Patrick Wäger, all working for the Technology and Society Lab of the Swiss Federal Institute for Materials Science and Technology, and published in September 2007. The graph breaks down the emissions released during each step in the production process, field-to-wheel.

European Parliament target: under the 50% reduction target (red line) allmost all conventional types of biodiesel and ethanol produced both in the EU and the US would be banned, except for cellulosic ethanol (from wood and grass) and ethanol made from sugarbeets. Corn ethanol as produced in the US, as well Europe's own grain and potato based alcohol would be banned. All types of biodiesel would fail to qualify, except for biodiesel made from palm oil when processing residues are used for the production of energy as is done in Brazil with bagasse (not shown in the graph). The other exception is methyl ester obtained from waste cooking oil. Europe's very own large rapeseed-based biodiesel industry would have to be closed down.

For biogas, the EP target would have some bizarre consequences: methane recovered from organic waste would not qualify as a biofuel for transport, even though it has lower emissions than natural gas, which is already a relatively low carbon fuel. Likewise, methane captured from sewage sludge and used for transport energy would not qualify. Only methane from wood (bio-SNG) and biogas made from manure in highly optimised systems, or from manure with an efficient energy crop co-substrate would be retained. The emerging biogas sector based on abundant, ordinary grass crops would not be allowed to sell its gas as a transport biofuel because it reduces emissions only by up to 30% compared with natural gas. 30% is not 50%.

Ironically, contrary to fuels grown in temperate climes, biofuels made in subtropical and tropical countries will definitely qualify as biofuels - at least on the emissions front. For the alcohol fuels, these are: ethanol from sweet sorghum and sugarcane; for biodiesel, certain types of palm oil fuel but only when the residual biomass is used for the production of energy and when the crop is grown in Africa or Latin America on non-forest land. Perhaps jatropha based biodiesel would make it for emissions, but harvesting the seeds of this shrub is not likely to be mechanised anywhere soon and is in fact so labor intensive that it would probably not meet the social sustainability criteria that will be included in the revised directive - jatropha requires slave-like cheap labor.

European Commission target (blue line) - likely to be a 25% CO2 reduction: under this more rational goal, a wider group of biofuels that reduce emissions would be allowed onto the market as green fuels:
energy :: sustainability :: biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: ethanol :: biodiesel :: biogas :: climate change :: European Union ::

Amongst the biodiesel crops, rapeseed would be back in business, but only under certain production schemes and in certain places. Palm oil would be in, as would U.S. soybean based diesel. Soy from Brazil results in emissions that are always too high, because the crop is grown on forest land.

Under the 25% target, ethanol would come from a wide variety of sources. Only U.S. corn ethanol would be banned, as would alcohol from potatoes and rye.

For biogas, the highly efficient grass based biogas production systems that are springing up across Europe would be retained, as would biogas from sewage sludge and from organic waste.

Conslusion
In short, these different targets would result in radically diverging consequences. Under the stringent goal, Europe would have to close virtually its entire existing biofuels sector and import everything from countries in Africa and Latin America, provided the fuels are produced in a socially sustainable way. It would be banning all fuels that reduce emissions by less than 50%, including those that achieve an interesting 49%.

Under the Commission's likely target, a wider range of biofuels would become available and all of them would help reduce carbon dioxide emissions substantially, but not necessarily radically. Not all of them would be as efficient as sugarcane ethanol, but at least some crops grown in Europe would be allowed to participate in the market. Efficient grass based biogas refineries would also be allowed in - which would be a rather rational thing to do.

The trick of anti-biofuels advocates will be to ask that all biofuels that do not reduce emissions by more than 50% be banned, and then to design social and environmental sustainability criteria so stringent as to ban all remaining biofuels. This is the strategy of those who could be denying developing countries one of the few historic opportunities they have to lift themselves out of poverty. This is a logic that could have the perverse effect of speeding up climate change.

The new directive will be published next week, January 23.