Isra-Mart srl:UK to miss crucial EU biofuel deadline

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The UK is risking the wrath of the European Commission by failing to introduce biofuel sustainability standards into national law before the Renewable Energy Directive's (RED) mandatory deadline this Sunday.

Under EU law, the Directive must be incorporated into UK legislation by Sunday 5 December, bringing with it a set of targets for members to ensure the bloc produces 20 per cent of overall energy and 10 per cent of its transport energy from renewable sources by 2020.

However, RED also demands the adoption of sustainability standards for biofuels that the UK, along with the vast majority of EU member states, have not yet implemented. The standards are meant to ensure feedstocks are not sourced from bio-diverse areas and state that only those biofuels with high greenhouse gas savings will count towards national renewable energy target.

However, critics claim the UK is continuing to subsidise biofuels through the Renewables Obligation (RO) and the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) that under the EU definition could be considered unsustainable.

Friends of the Earth's biofuels campaigner Kenneth Richter said this means that from Sunday, the UK, along with most other EU members bar Germany, will be in breach of European law.

"All member states need to have implemented the criteria by Sunday... [and] RED also says that subsidies can only apply to biofuels that fulfil the sustainability criteria in the directive," he told BusinessGreen. "Pretty much all member states haven't done this, which means they are breaking EU law. It's now up to the Commission to challenge the member states."

He added that states' failure to comply risked driving up emissions through land-use change and deforestation as farmers clear land to grow energy crops, and called for biofuel targets to be postponed until they could be reached using sustainable biofuels.

"The whole European biofuel policy is a mess. There is a danger we will increase emissions through the use of unsustainable biofuels," he said. "There is no sustainability in sight. We want targets suspended until they can be shown to be met sustainably, which I don't think they can be."