The EU should look at how countries across the world promote biofuels in their national policies and, following the announcement of the Green Deal, basically \u201crevisit\u201d the Renewable Energy Directive (RED II) on road transport decarbonisation, a biofuel expert told EURACTIV.com.<\/p>\n
\u201cCapping conventional biofuels is not in the right direction [\u2026] it would give impetus to the oil sector, which would have a bigger share in the future,\u201d Bharadwaj Kummamuru, executive director of the World Bioenergy Association (WBA), which represents the bioenergy sector globally, said on the sidelines of COP25 in Madrid.<\/p>\n
As part of the \u201cClean Energy for All Europeans\u201d package, EU member states revised the Renewable Energy Directive in an effort to boost the use of renewables and help the bloc meet its obligations under the Paris Agreement.<\/p>\n
The EU decided to set a target of having a 14% share of renewables in transport. Conventional biofuels, such as bioethanol or biodiesel, were capped at 7% by 2030, while 3.5% should be reserved for so-called advanced biofuels.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur message for EU policymakers is to look at what\u2019s happening in the rest of the world in terms of national policies promoting biofuels. There is no discussion on crop or non-crop based biofuels, food versus fuel debates, these topics are off the table,\u201d Kummamuru said.<\/p>\n
Green Deal and RED II<\/p>\n
The issue of re-examining the REDII was recently raised by Artur Runge-Metzger, director of the Commission\u2019s Climate Action directorate. \u201cI hear so much criticism around RED II [\u2026] I think that probably the Commission will do good to look at it, again, whether this is going to lead to a new proposal, or whatsoever,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The European Commission unveiled on Wednesday its much-anticipated European Green Deal, outlining a long list of policy initiatives aimed at putting Europe on track to reach net-zero global warming emissions by 2050.<\/p>\n
The Green Deal is expected to re-open a number of energy-related policies in order to update them and basically adjust them to the new green long-term objectives.<\/p>\n
Regarding transport, the automotive sector is once again in the Commission\u2019s firing line. The current objective is to reach 95gCO2\/km by 2021. Now \u201cwe need to work towards zero,\u201d sometime in the 2030s, said an EU official, who asked not to be named.<\/p>\n
Electric vehicles will be further encouraged with the objective of deploying one million public charging points across Europe by 2025. \u201cEvery family in Europe needs to be able to drive their electric car without having to worry about the next charging station,\u201d the official explained.<\/p>\n
Dependence on oil<\/p>\n
Kummamuru insisted that in the medium to long term, oil is expected to stay the main energy source for transport, although declining to some extent in future years.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy 2030, we will still have a lot more conventional engines than electric vehicles even though countries across the world have quite ambitious transport electrification targets. But at the same time, in order to meet the demand for these conventional engines by 2030 or even 2050, we will still need a lot of sustainable biofuels,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He added that these biofuels are already commercially available and have proven to be able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared to fossil fuels.<\/p>\n
\u201cBioethanol and biodiesel will still play a big role in decarbonising the transport sector,\u201d he said, adding that biofuels managed to survive the strong criticism as they do not affect only the energy sector but also agriculture and farmers.<\/p>\n
According to the NGO Transport and Environment (T&E), the uptake of electric vehicles in Europe is expected to accelerate through the mid-2020s.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhilst in 2025, only 10% of the total European new vehicle sales will consist of zero and low emission vehicles (ZLEVs), this number is expected to increase to 25% in 2030 under the baseline case. Within ZLEVs, battery electric vehicles (BEVs) would be the dominant powertrain technology from the early 2020s,\u201d a report reads.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis would mean that in 2030, 85% of the vehicle stock will still be powered by internal combustion engines (ICE). However, by 2050, electric vehicles are expected to dominate the stock, reducing the proportion of ICE cars to 20%,\u201d T&E added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The EU should look at how countries across the world promote biofuels in their national policies and, following the announcement of the Green Deal, basically \u201crevisit\u201d the Renewable Energy Directive (RED II) on road transport decarbonisation, a biofuel expert told EURACTIV.com. \u201cCapping conventional biofuels is not in the right direction [\u2026] it would give impetus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[5818,16496],"supplier":[5585],"class_list":["post-69965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-biofuel","tag-greendeal","supplier-european-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69965\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69965"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=69965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}