European farmers stress biodiesel role in agriculture and transport decarbonisation post-2020

The European Oilseed Alliance (EOA), the European Biodiesel Board (EBB), and the Vegetable Oil and Protein Meal Industry stress the importance of sustainable energy sources in the low-carbon economy post-2020.

The organisation held on Wednesday a dinner debate in the European Parliament, during which panellists from all backgrounds discussed the role of sustainable biodiesel in the future European bioeconomy.

The event allowed EU stakeholders and policy-makers to share Californian experiences through the participation of Stephen Kaffka from the University of California.

Kaffka explained the policy environment in California and highlighted that the work done by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) on ILUC has been incremental in developing incentive policies for biodiesel.

“The study carried out by the CARB found that rapeseed biodiesel has a low ILUC impact, classifying it among the best biofuels. It has hence been the basis for an alternative fuel policy that encourages innovation and relies on consistent and publicly transparent methods. As a result, biodiesel will play an increasingly larger role in helping California achieve its transportation GHG reduction goals in the next several years,” Kaffka said.

Opening the discussions, MEP Françoise Grossetête, VP of the EPP Group in the European Parliament, brought up the challenges that the EU biodiesel producers and farmers are facing following the European Commission’s (EC) announcement of a gradual phase-out of crop-based biofuels.

“The long-term stability of the regulatory and policy framework is essential to secure the investments that were made in the European biodiesel sector – whose development was encouraged by the European legislator – and for promoting the development of advanced technologies”, she said.

European farmers also expressed their serious concerns over the proposed phasing out of first generation biofuels.

The European biodiesel production was developed mainly on mandatory set-aside lands, which has allowed to significantly reduce the EU protein deficit and to guarantee an income for farmers, while producing ILUC-free biodiesel.

As such, Yves Madre, co-founder of the think tank FarmEurope, underlined that the large majority of the biodiesel produced from European feedstocks has not had any ILUC emissions.

“European feedstock-sourced biodiesel induces the production of 7 million tonnes of additional protein feed materials annually, thus reducing feed imports and attributing an ILUC credit to biodiesel”, he pointed out.

The EC is assessing the different options for the post-2020 energy package, expected to be published on 7 December.