The EU’s complex policy approach to biofuels lacks a long-term outlook and risks undermining the bloc’s transport decarbonisation targets, an analysis by the European Court of Auditors has found.
Businesses remain sceptical that a new EU certification framework for carbon removals is sufficient to generate a self-sustaining market, arguing Brussels must do more to make removing carbon from the atmosphere financially attractive.
The Irish government has confirmed it will set up a working group to ensure the sustainability of biofuels used in the country, as concerns grow that tainted fuels are entering the EU market.
Skewed data was used to determine the impact of the EU's renewable energy directive, a scientific paper has claimed, raising questions about the model and process employed by the European Commission to assess policy options for transport decarbonisation.
The delay in implementing a tool to protect the EU market against fraudulent biofuels imports has been heavily criticised by European biofuel producers, who point the finger at the European Commission.
The German government appears to have dropped a much-debated idea of cutting diesel subsidies for farmers for now, but the question of what climate-friendly alternatives there are for tractors and other agricultural machinery remains.
Measures to ensure the integrity of biofuels imported into the EU single market are not fit for purpose, an EU producer has claimed, asserting that EU-backed certification schemes are failing to prevent fraud.
Spain, the current holder of the EU Council presidency, has been accused of undermining the adoption of carbon capture and storage (CCS) in Europe following the circulation of a discussion paper that questions the EU's approach.
The Danish government is investing billions of euros to establish the country as a hub for carbon capture and storage (CCS) in Europe, a technology central to the EU’s 2050 net-zero climate plans.
Europe needs to prioritise CO2 sequestration and provide a business case to avoid losing out on industrial competitiveness to the US, argues Zoltán Szabó.
The European Commission has recognised the role of crop-based biofuels in decarbonising transport, despite pushing through legislation for their phase-out domestically.
The new greenhouse gas emission reduction target for transport fuels under the updated Renewable Energy Directive could reduce the amount of crop-based biofuels used in German road transport if implemented strictly, biofuel producers say.
Efforts to boost carbon capture and storage (CCS) in Europe are insufficient according to biofuels makers, who say the United States offer better incentives.
If Europe achieves its 2030 biomethane target it will have unwittingly created the conditions to cheaply mitigate the carbon emissions equivalent to an entire member state, writes James Cogan.
Amid plans by the German agricultural and environmental ministries to phase out conventional biofuels by 2030, energy crop producers argue that with the current oversupply of grain in countries neighbouring Ukraine, their justification has become obsolete.
Recently released figures by EU statistics agency Eurostat show a substantial fall in the amount of renewable energy in the transport sector for 2021, an alarming trend that affects almost all EU countries.
EU policymakers have repeatedly confirmed the sustainability of crop-based biofuels, yet the latest draft Council Presidency draft proposal on energy taxation would treat them as fossil fuels. That undermines the EU’s climate goals and its Paris Agreement commitments, writes David Carpintero.
Subsidies for bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) risk diverting large sums of funding to projects unlikely to benefit the climate. Instead, they should be spent on home insulation and heat pumps that will reduce carbon emissions and relieve fuel poverty, argues Almuth Ernsting.
The EU may be ambitious in its objective to decarbonise transport based on new technologies such as electric cars, but official figures indicate that member states are already breaching laws related to existing technologies, such as conventional biofuels.
European Parliament plans to exclude some types of primary wood from the EU's renewable energy goals is causing jitters among the industry, which points to bioenergy as an essential part of the EU's energy security.
Countries around the world such as Brazil or India are scaling up the production of biofuels to decarbonise transport, while the EU is still stuck in the “food versus fuel” debate, the executive director of the World Bioenergy Association told EURACTIV in an interview.
Non-governmental organisation Transport and Environment (T&E) and the ethanol industry have clashed over the latter’s increasing interest in producing vegan food in addition to biofuel, which aims to end the long-standing “food versus fuel” argument.
EURACTIV attended the Farmers’ Day event in Dunafö ldvár in Hungary, where local farmers and producers highlighted the need for Europe to focus on producing its own animal feed.
The European Union is losing its forest carbon sink at an alarming rate, with harvesting for biomass fuel a key driver behind the loss, according to new research released on Monday (7 November).
