Producers of biofuel from Used Cooking Oil (UCO) and animal fats said they agreed with the EU executive\u2019s initiative for greener fuels in the air transport sector but pointed out a number of challenges that they said could have serious economic implications for their businesses.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe understand that we are at the very early stages of law-drafting, however, during a SAF Roundtable held on 4 March 2020 Commission officials singled out potential measures to promote SAF, including a blending mandate and prioritisation measures \u2018to direct liquid road transport fuels towards aviation\u2019,\u201d the letter reads.<\/p>\n
A blending mandate means mixing up SAF with kerosene, a process similar to oil and biofuels in the road transport sector.<\/p>\n
Aviation accounts for approximately 2.1 % of global CO2 emissions \u2013 roughly equivalent to Germany\u2019s total annual emissions \u2013 making aviation a key sector to decarbonise in order to reach UN climate goals set out in the Paris Agreement.<\/p>\n
More than 99% of airline emissions and approximately 50% of airport emissions are related to the combustion of jet fuel. The airline sector has committed to reducing by 2050 aviation\u2019s net CO2 emissions to 50% of what they were in 2005.<\/p>\n
With the revised Renewable Energy Directive (RED II), the Commission has set a 14% renewable energy target to decarbonise Europe\u2019s transport sector as a whole, including second-generation biofuels such as UCO.<\/p>\n
But the biodiesel industry now fears that with the SAF initiative, the executive wants to shift waste-based biofuels from road transport to aviation, which they fear might create market imbalances and also slow road decarbonisation efforts.<\/p>\n
In order for waste-based feedstocks, such as UCO and animal fats, to be used as SAF, they must be transformed through a technologically advanced process and few EU producers will be able to refine these waste-based feedstocks to a high enough quality fuel to be used for SAF.<\/p>\n
As such, any measure creating mandates or disproportionate incentives for the use of UCO and animal fats for aviation would give a critical economic advantage to SAF producers, allowing them to dominate the feedstocks market.<\/p>\n
The industry pointed out in the letter that this will have a negative impact on other biodiesel producers, ultimately leading to the closure of plants.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis would provide significantly less total GHG reductions overall, thus dealing a major blow to the decarbonisation of the EU road transport sector.\u201d<\/p>\n
EURACTIV asked the European Commission if such plans are in the making and whether the executive has examined the potential implications on the road transport climate objectives.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can confirm the receipt of the letter which we are currently analysing and will reply in due time. We can\u2019t comment further on it,\u201d a Commission spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
Another aspect raised by the biodiesel industry is investor uncertainty caused by the constantly changing legislation.<\/p>\n
When it comes to Renewable Energy Directive and biofuels, the Commission has been changing the legislation and the respective climate targets since 2008.<\/p>\n
Waste-based biodiesel producers using lipid feedstocks such as used cooking oil (UCO) have already invested more than \u20ac1.5 billion and another potential change of policy could damage investors\u2019 confidence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Producers of biofuel from Used Cooking Oil (UCO) and animal fats said they agreed with the EU executive\u2019s initiative for greener fuels in the air transport sector but pointed out a number of challenges that they said could have serious economic implications for their businesses. \u201cWe understand that we are at the very early stages […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"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":[10794,5714],"supplier":[],"class_list":["post-76234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-aviationfuel","tag-biofuels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76234","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\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76234\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76234"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=76234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}