BERLIN
,
March 9, 2022
(press release)
–
Solar power cannot make the existing vehicle fleet climate-friendly The German biofuel associations UFOP and German Bioethanol Industry Association (BDBe) consider that the paper on “agrofuels” published today by Environmental Action Germany (DUH) adopts a completely erroneous position in questioning sustainable biofuels’ officially certified contribution to climate change mitigation. DUH creates a misleading impression that also misses the mark when it comes to the genuine, urgent need to take action, giving the impression that the current vehicle fleet, including 55 million vehicles with internal combustion engines, could be powered by solar energy. Sustainable domestic biofuels from cultivated biomass and residues will continue to play a leading role in defossilising road transport and ensuring energy security in coming decades.
The DUH paper envisages alternative utilisation of land on which feedstocks for biofuel production are currently cultivated and proposes renaturation. In addition, it advocates installing solar-based systems to generate the energy needed by the transport sector, which to date has been provided by biofuels. The authors neither address the cost of developing such huge solar power capacity or indicate how this project is to be financed. They also fail to factor in farmers’ loss of income due to this alternative land use, while also ignoring the cost of converting the vehicle fleet to electric mobility.
In its blanket denial of biofuels’ climate protection impact because of the land required, the paper commissioned by DUH assumes that arable land currently used to cultivate biofuel feedstocks would be set aside and planted with trees. The paper asserts that the ensuing carbon sequestration would outperform CO2 reductions from biofuels. DUH concludes that producing solar electricity for electric vehicles would be significantly less land-intensive and would therefore favour it as a renewable source of engine power.
DUH fails to answer the question of how to compensate in the short term for the loss of emissions savings for greenhouse gas that cause climate damage that would arise if sustainable biofuels were no longer used. Cars would not simply disappear from Germany’s roads if biofuels were withdrawn from the market – and nowadays some are fuelled with sustainable biofuels that provide average GHG savings of over 90 %. In this context, failure to meet the reduction targets set out in the German Climate Change Act would result in opportunity costs, as the German government would have to use tax revenues to purchase emission rights from other Member States. Fossil fuels currently account for 92.5 percent of energy consumed in the transport sector. Only 7.5 per cent of the sector’s energy use comes from renewables. Biomass-based liquid and gaseous fuels make up about 90 per cent of renewable energy sources, with the figure rising to over 98 per cent for road transport. Estimates indicate that by 2030 around 120 million tonnes of greenhouse gases will have been saved in the transport sector, thanks to bioethanol, biodiesel and biomethane.
With regard to European biofuel production, the associations underline that it is subject to strict sustainability requirements, which have been made more stringent several times over the past 15 years and will become even more ambitious thanks to the European Commission’s proposal to amend the Renewable Energy Directive (2018/2001/EC):
Even with an ambitious market ramp-up of electromobility, it must be assumed that more than 30 million passenger cars and almost all commercial vehicles will still be equipped with a combustion engine in 2030. However, these vehicles must also contribute to defossilisation, but – contrary to the ideas proposed by DUH – cannot be powered by solar and wind energy. UFOP and BDBe view sustainable biofuels based on European agricultural feedstocks as an immediately available alternative to petrol and diesel that is affordable for consumers.
Production of these biofuels secures value creation and jobs in rural areas and, thanks to the co-products generated, especially GMO-free protein animal feed, helps to reduce food and feed imports from third countries.
* All content is copyrighted by Industry Intelligence, or the original respective author or source. You may not recirculate, redistrubte or publish the analysis and presentation included in the service without Industry Intelligence's prior written consent. Please review our terms of use.