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According to relevant sources, once more stringent biofuel sustainability standards are passed, the EU will ban the import of biofuels from tropical rainforests, wetlands and grasslands, which may lead to paralysis in the biofuel industry in Southeast Asia.
Prior to this, the UN Energy Agency in its report had advocated the establishment of an international biomass energy certification system to ensure that all biomass energy products and biofuels meet environmental standards. The European Union's efforts to promote the sustainability of biofuel development may lead the rest of the world’s major fuel-consuming countries to re-examine their biofuel development routes.
A new legislative move passed by the European Commission a year ago called for the revision of the EU's current fuel quality directives and the development of more stringent environmental protection standards for the production and transportation of fuels, thereby effectively reducing greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change and accelerating Toward a "low-carbon economy" society. The motion proposes that from 2011 onwards, fuel suppliers will reduce greenhouse gas emissions during the refining, transport and use of fuel by increasing production efficiency and the availability of biofuels. By 2020, a cumulative reduction of 10% should be achieved, ie, a reduction of 500 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions, equivalent to the current total emissions of Spain and Sweden.
In principle, biofuels can not only replace fossil fuels, but also reduce the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere. Moreover, crops can also absorb carbon dioxide, the main component of greenhouse gases, during the growth period. However, experts pointed out that the fuel produced from agricultural crops will re-emit the same gas after combustion, so crop fuels have a potential impact on environmental warming. More importantly, with the rapid development of biofuels, the problems brought about by it are increasingly prominent, such as the reduction of arable land, the lack of water resources, and the rising food prices caused by instability in agricultural production.
The Royal Society believes that the use of a certain percentage of biofuels will not help carbon dioxide emissions, but special measures should be taken. In view of this, EU countries believe that the fuel quality directive should include biofuel sustainability standards to avoid fuel manufacturers simply considering reducing CO2 emissions at the lowest cost, regardless of other environmental side effects. They hope to establish these standards as soon as possible to prevent fuel manufacturers from investing in cheap biofuels.
However, the European Commission insists that its established biofuel sustainability standards have been included in a draft directive on renewable energy submitted at the beginning of this year, including the use of biofuels in Europe must reach the minimum level of greenhouse gas accumulation. Therefore, there is no need for biofuels sustainability standards to be written into the revised Fuel Quality Directive. The two sides have stagnated on the issue of sustainable standards.
At present, this stalemate has been broken. Because the government officials of EU member states have established a working group, they will establish "core guidelines" for the sustainable development of biofuels and include them in different forms in the above two directives.
However, how to define sustainable standards for biofuels is likely to be controversial. John Pickett, head of biochemistry at Rothamsted Research, said that the accumulation of greenhouse gases depends on how the crop is grown and transformed, and how fuel is used. Therefore, increasing the use of biofuel indiscriminately may make it difficult to achieve the best reduction of emissions. Dorette Corbey, one of the drafters of the European Parliament’s report, said that the introduction of these two directives has a huge incentive for the development of biofuels. However, as the European Commission has not yet submitted its sustainability criteria for discussion, the European Parliament has no choice but to give guidelines.
The governments of EU member states and the European Parliament reached a consensus at the end of February: Both the European Union's directive on the promotion of renewable energy and the fuel quality directive will include sustainable standards for biofuels. The relevant working group for setting standards has been established and the draft will be submitted by June. This move meant that the impasse that had impeded the EU’s revision of the fuel quality directive was finally broken, and the EU countries’ efforts to promote the sustainable development of biofuels have taken a big step forward.
July 23, 2024