European groups comment on key RED vote in Parliament
Summary
The European Parliament has taken a positive step on EU renewable energy policy as ITRE Committee members voted decisively in favor of increasing the ambition for GHG emissions reduction in transport while leaving Member States free to use crop-based biofuels in their transport energy mix. The ITRE position – adopted by a vote of 54 in favor, 14 against, 6 abstentions – largely maintains the framework for crop-based biofuels as suggested by the European Commission, with a crop cap set at each Member State’s 2020 final consumption of energy in transport, allowing +1 percent flexibility with a maximum of 7 percent. ITRE members signaled that sustainably produced crop-based biofuels do play an important role in transport decarbonization – today and tomorrow. This is certainly an improvement over the misguided approach toward agriculture taken by the ENVI committee, which would severely reduce the cap on crop-based biofuels and create a gap in the transport energy mix that would have to be filled by imported fossil fuel. Our sectors are at the crossroads of moving towards climate neutral food and feed production, fossil-fuel substitution and European energy independence, GHG emissions savings and the domestic bioeconomy.