Europe’s biofuels sector produces one of the most cost-effective and sustainable alternatives to fossil oil while also contributing to both EU energy independence and food security. But unfortunately, constant changes in EU policy direction—sometimes based on wrong assumptions and misleading dogma such as the “food vs. fuel” myth, have slowed progress and hampered investments.

Despite their proven track record of contributing significantly to the fight against climate change, reducing imported fossil fuel, generating high-protein animal feed and strengthening rural economies, innovation and productivity, the EU’s biofuels and agriculture sectors are consistently criticized and given short shrift in policy discussions relating to food security and energy independence.

In other biofuels-producing countries around the world, these synergies and contributions are better understood and valorized. But in the EU, some policymakers keep chanting the “food vs. fuel” argument like a mantra in papers and reports—even though a majority of members of the European Parliament, motivated by facts and conscious that biofuels are indispensable to achieve our collective goals, voted last September to keep sustainable biofuels in the EU transport energy mix.

Nevertheless, the “food vs. fuel” drumbeat continues. One recent example is a European Commission´s staff working document on “Drivers of Food Security,” published in early January, in which the institution’s secretariat highlights concerns that a “food versus fuel trade-off” is created by biofuel production from food crops, and that continued expansion of biofuel production increases pressure on global food security.

This document from the Commission offers no real-world evidence for these assumptions and contradicts its own recent statements that biofuels production has had negligible or no impact on food prices and requires only a minuscule percentage of EU arable land. These assumptions also run counter to the Commission’s own Renewable Energy Progress Reports, which regularly confirm the sustainability of EU biofuels production and find no significant environmental impact from feedstock cultivation.

What the EU needs to achieve its many goals is a consistent, fact-based policy:

1. It is not ‘food vs fuel’ but food AND fuel: For every litre of renewable ethanol made from cereals, 1 kilogramme of highly digestible dried distiller grain with solubles (DDGS) rich in vegetable protein is produced; in fact in 2021, ePURE members representing 85% of EU installed production capacity produced more feed than fuel.

European biorefineries produce sustainable biofuels from cereals, sugar beet, wastes, and residues, and simultaneously generate food and feed co-products essential for the food chain, including important protein by-products that offset the need to import such commodities.

Biofuels production also provides other co-products that replace fossil chemicals in various applications. By offering an additional revenue to farmers, biofuels production helps manage growing market fluctuations as the EU market is more and more open to third countries’ imports.

2. Biofuels are subject to strict environmental criteria over their full life-cycle: Suggestions associating biofuels with biodiversity loss and climate crisis fail to recognize that biofuel production and use in the EU are subject to strict sustainability criteria, as well as a cap on crop-based biofuel consumption in transport included in the EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED II), and further limits in the Fuel Quality Directive for the blending of certain biofuels.

Biofuels are a locally produced, sustainable alternative to fossil fuel with an important role to play in de-carbonizing transport. The emissions of all other alternatives, such as electrification, should be assessed on a full life-cycle basis to avoid misleading conclusions.

3. Biofuels are needed to decarbonize the existing fleet for at least the next 15 years: Fully enabling sustainable biofuels in the drive to carbon-neutrality is just common sense. Even under a scenario in which electric vehicles make rapid gains in market share and the sale of internal combustion engines is phased out, the EU car fleet will consist predominantly of vehicles that run fully or partly on liquid fuel in 2030 and beyond.

Even now, many EU Member States are falling short of their transport emissions reduction goals, especially when the impact of multipliers is removed. Multipliers give a counterproductive and unrealistic view of progress towards climate goals.

Meanwhile, crop-based biofuels remain, by far, the main renewable energy source in EU transport. Further marginalizing their use based on misleading claims about their impact on food security will only make it harder for EU Member States to achieve their climate goals. And it will also leave Europe more reliant on fossil fuels and imported protein.

The EU does not have to choose between its climate, energy and food security goals when it has a pragmatic, proven, homegrown solution that is already delivering results and could do much more with the right approach. Europe needs policymakers to see how biofuels contribute significantly to climate, energy and food security goals, rather than be blinded by the simplistic, detrimental “food vs. fuel” dogma.

David Carpintero
Director General, ePURE,
the European Renewable
Ethanol Association
carpintero@epure.org

PRINTED IN MAY EPM