Bioenergy Legislation and Policy in Europe and Africa

Biofuel mandates and targets

Bio-fuel targets and increasing demand for food have been under debate as two competing uses of land with potentially adverse effects for food security.

To better understand the effects of mandates on agricultural commodity price level and volatility, modelling experiments integrating the agricultural, bio-energy and forestry sectors were conducted by Fuss et al 2011 using GLOBIOM (Global Biosphere Management). They found that very tight annual biofuel targets contributed to higher price volatility, while targets implemented in terms of contingents for food would not have negative effects on the price volatility (see EU‐funded FP7 project: PASHMINA (grant no. 244766 ).

In the UK, the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) came to a similar conclusion: the EU in its Renewable Energy Directive obliges a 10% share of renewable energy in the transport fuel mix by 2020, subject to the “sustainability” of production and commercial viability of second-generation biofuels. Temporarily relaxing this obligation could allow agricultural markets to work more efficiently and reduce the size of a price spike. DEFRA argues that a system of flexible mandates would in effect create a ‘virtual grain store’ because biofuels mandates have led to increased agricultural production relative to a state of the world where there are no biofuels mandates. The extra supply could follow market forces onto food or animal feed markets during a price spike, if the mandates allowed it.

A cap on food-sourced biofuel in Europe

If you take a field planted with grain and switch that crop to something that can be used to make a biofuel, then somebody will go hungry unless the missing grain is grown elsewhere or farming yields are massively improved. This is the basis of "Indirect land use change" ILUC. In 2012 a European Commission legislative proposal on biofuels and ILUC sought to:

• Introduce mandatory indirect land use change (ILUC) factors in the calculation of GHG effects of biofuels. 
• Limit the use of food-based biofuels to meet the 10% renewable energy target of the Renewable Energy Directive to 5%. This was to stimulate the development of alternative, so-called second generation biofuels from non-food feedstock.

In July 2013 Members of the European Parliament Environment Committee (ENVI) voted that:

• Freeing up land to produce food crops was leading to deforestation, over-farming and other ‘indirect land use change’ (ILUC).  This, in turn, was found to be increasing greenhouse gas emissions – thus cancelling out the ‘beneficial effects of using biofuels’ over traditional fossil fuels. 
• ‘Advanced biofuels’, such as those from seaweed, organic wastes and residues are ‘currently not commercially available in large quantities, in part due to competition for public subsidies with established food crop based biofuel technologies’. 

The Renewable Energy Directive (2009/28/EC) adopted in 2009 requires a 10% share of biofuels in the transportation sector, and the Fuel Quality Directive (98/70/EC) as amended in 2009 (2009/30/EC) sets a target of a 6% GHG reduction for fuels used in the transport sector in 2020. These targets are now to be partially reversed.

MEPs voted for the following draft legal measures: 

• Biofuels produced from food and energy crops must not exceed 5.5 per cent of total energy consumption for transport purposes by 2020;
• Advanced biofuels produced from other sources, such as seaweed or certain types of waste, must account for ‘no less than two per cent of consumption’ by 2020;
• The share of advanced biofuels ‘should not be achieved at the cost of depriving other industries of raw materials, destabilising EU waste policy, overexploiting forests or reducing biodiversity’;
• Emissions arising from ILUC factors should be included when calculating official emissions impacts;
• Member states must ensure that renewable energy sources account for at least 10 per cent of transport fuel use by 2020; and
• Electricity produced from renewable sources should account for two per cent of total transport energy consumption by 2020. 

Nevertheless there are major concerns that

• The measures will reduce the stimulus for investments in improving agricultural yields and practices. 
• The measures are based on ILUC factors which show a lack of consistency and accuracy.

The background for take-up or not of agricultural practice leading to green technologies and biofuels in Africa requires an understanding of in-country bioenergy legislation, policy and mandates. These are summarised for:

• South Africa
• Namibia
• Ghana
• Europe