Biofuels do little to help the climate: Reform of EU regulations is needed

By Finfacts Team

May 14, 2010

Biofuels possibly have a negative impact on the concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere under current EU regulations.

Using cultivated land to produce the biomass for biofuels results in new land being cleared for the purpose of producing food. In extreme cases, the new land cleared is in tropical forests. Since this can generate considerable amounts of GHGs, the use of biofuels under the current regulations hardly helps the climate. Only by reforming the sustainability requirements for producing biofuels, will they have a positive benefit. This is the main finding of a study conducted by Mareike Lange, of the German Kiel Institute for the World Economy, which she has published together with Dominique Bruhn as a Kiel Policy Brief.

The authors say biofuels remain an important element of the EU strategy for reducing GHGs. The EU plans to be able to use renewable, nonfossil energy sources to cover at least 10 percent of energy used in the transportation sector by 2020, and biofuels are the most important such source.

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