The vast majority of European citizens believe that food-based biofuels should be promoted by the EU, according to a new industry-funded opinion poll published on January 23.
Last July, the European Commission published a European Strategy for Low-Emission Mobility proposing that food-based biofuels be gradually phased out and replaced with “more advanced biofuels”, according to Euractiv.com. The proposal triggered strong reactions in the biofuels industry, which blamed the Commission for being “prejudiced” and questioned the scientific basis of its proposal.
In addition to environmental concerns such as the indirect land use change (ILUC), according to the EU executive, the decision to phase out conventional biofuels after 2020 was also driven by public opinion’s stance on first generation biofuels coming from food, particularly from crops such as sugar beet, corn, and wheat.
Speaking at a conference last October, Marie Donnelly, the director of Renewables, Research, and Energy Efficiency at DG Energy, said “I’m sorry but it’s as simple as that […] the first emotive reaction was that you take food off the table of a poor starving child in Africa and you put it into the tank to burn it.”
“We are taking food from people who are starving elsewhere in the world… we have not succeeded in changing that position in the minds of many people in Europe,” Donnelly added.
Reacting to this statement, Charles-Albert Peers, president of the European renewable ethanol association (ePURE), told EurActiv.com that the only EU-wide citizens’ opinion survey ever conducted on biofuels showed that the vast majority of Europeans feel that sustainable biofuels should be encouraged.
“Is the Commission out of touch with what the public actually want and ignoring yet again its own work?” he wondered.
According to the Eurobarometer survey, which was published by the Commission in 2010, approximately 72% of Europeans believed that biofuels should be encouraged and 20% held the opposite view. Regarding the sustainable biofuels, in particular, 83% of EU citizens replied that sustainable biofuels should be encouraged. “Only one European in ten disagrees and seven percent lack an opinion,” the survey noted.
According to the new EuroPulse poll, which was carried out by German survey firm Dalia on behalf of the ethanol industry association (ePURE), the vast majority of EU citizens still back the use of conventional biofuels.
“More than 69% of Europeans surveyed say conventional biofuels should be encouraged, while just 15% think they should not, according to the of 11,283 respondents in 28 EU countries,” the survey stressed, underlining that the opposition to biofuels decreased further compared to the 2010 Eurobarometer poll – dropping from 20% to 15%.
Commenting on the results of the survey, the Secretary General of ePURE, Emmanuel Desplechin attacked the EU executive saying that its proposal threatens to remove “one of the EU’s best options for reducing greenhouse gases and decarbonising transport”.
“Commission policy should be based on science and evidence rather than on a misreading of public opinion,” Desplechin emphasised.
Contacted by EurActiv.com, an EU spokesperson said that the replacement of conventional biofuels with more advanced biofuels would address the indirect land use change (ILUC) as well as ensure an increase of consumption of fossil fuels is avoided.