Biofuels – a story without a happy end By Ariel Brunner and Trees Robijns, BirdLife Europe – partially based on the analysis of the Commission’s Globiom study carried out by Transport & Environment (T&E) Biofuels have been promoted in Europe since the early 2000s. In the beginning, they were touted as a
It’s crunch time for the EU’s new bioenergy policy By Sini Eräjää, Policy Officer EU Bioenergy, Birdlife Europe and the European Environmental Bureau After many years of contemplation, the moment for the EU to decide on how to regulate bioenergy use is approaching. Today, the Commission is closing a public
Biodiesel: a cure worse than the fossil disease By Lisa Benedetti, BirdLife Europe Biodiesel is the most consumed biofuel in Europe. It is projected to make up almost 70% of the EU biofuels market by 2020. This dependence poses some questions, so the European Commission is now considering what its
GRAS – a tool to guarantee sustainable bioenergy By guest authors Mohammad Abdel-Razek, Jan Henke, Pascal Ripplinger, GRAS Global Risk Assessment Services GmbH The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) acknowledges that “bioenergy has a significant greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation potential, provided that the resources are developed sustainably”. True, the
France is set to ignore EU limits on bad biofuels By Faustine Bas-Defossez, Senior Policy Officer, Agriculture and Bioenergy, EEB All eyes will be on finding solutions to fight climate change in the run up to COP21 in Paris later this year. So it is simply astonishing to see that
Group of NGOs speak out – Bioenergy is not renewable When one considers the International Energy Agency’s definition for renewable energy, ‘energy derived from natural processes, like sunlight and wind, that are replenished at a faster rate than they are consumed’, one should think twice about bioenergy being fed by crops
Biodiesel consumption increased in 2014 Taken from the Transport & Environment Bulletin, September edition. New figures show the amount of biofuels being used for transport in the EU rose by 6.1% in 2014, but the increase is less than the fall in transport biofuels registered in 2013. The rise suggests
Seven years’ biofuels deliberations teaches us ‘put quality before quantity’ By Jos Dings, Policy Team Director at Transport & Environment April 2015 will enter history as the month in which the EU reversed course on its energy policies in transport. It adopted its long-mooted reform of biofuels policy – especially
Cap on biofuels – next cap on all bioenergy? Written by Sini Eräjää, EU Bioenergy Policy Officer for BirdLife Europe and the European Environmental Bureau. The new legislation to limit support for the use of food-based biofuels endorsed by the European Parliament today marks a milestone. It marks the closing of the
Does bioenergy fit in the vision for an Energy Union? Written by Sini Eräjää, EU Bioenergy Policy Officer for BirdLife Europe and the European Environmental Bureau. The European Commission’s strategy paper on the Energy Union, published earlier this year once again declared the Commission’s commitment to “an energy policy to make the
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