EU lawmakers defer freezing cap on biofuels from food crops

European Union (EU) lawmakers have deferred plans to curb the use of fuels made from food crops, providing a reprieve for some in the bio-energy industry.
The European Parliament’s environment committee failed to give the go-ahead for EU negotiators to begin work on a legal text to implement the cap, making it unlikely anything can be agreed before 2015.
The proposal has divided EU member states and industry.
Those involved in turning food crops into fuel, known as first-generation biofuels, argued that more time and more hard evidence was needed before a policy shift.
“Any change to the current legislative framework requires solid and verifiable scientific evidence,” agricultural and biofuel organizations, including the European Biodiesel Board and bioethanol lobby ePURE, said in a letter to lawmakers.
Environmentalists and those working on an advanced generation of biodiesel and bioethanol made from algae or waste had urged a quick decision.
Delay is now likely to be long because the European Parliament has elections next year and a new set of Commissioners will be appointed, creating a legislative hiatus.
“This is bad news for industry and investors who need clarity,” Kare Riis Nielsen, director of European affairs at Danish firm Novozymes, said in a statement.
“Ongoing regulatory uncertainty is jeopardising all the parallel EU efforts to attract much needed investments in innovative renewable energy technologies, including in advanced biofuels.”
Novozymes makes enzymes used in creating advanced biofuels, which do not pose the problems of the first generation, but have so far failed to attract enough investment.
In 2009, the EU set a target for a 10% share of renewable energy in transport, with almost all of it to come from first generation crop-based biofuels.
Use of first generation biofuel is already roughly 5% and almost enough production capacity has been installed to meet the 10% target, so the proposed cap could have forced plant closures.