April 10, 2008
Commission ploughs a lone furrow on biofuels
Thursday’s thundering Financial Times editorial on the food crisis unfortunately arrived too late to change opinions on the 13th floor of the Berlaymont, the European Commission nerve centre. The day before the call for a pause in the push for biofuels was made Jose Manuel Barroso, Commission president, defended the policy.
He said the use of crops for fuel had so far had little effect on higher food prices. It can’t be often that the Commission disagrees with its multilateral brethren, the IMF, World Bank and United Nations.
Barroso said the push to increase biofuels to 10 per cent of the EU transport fuel mix by 2020 will continue. In fact, by creating a market for sustainable biofuels the EU could improve their production round the world, he said.
Perhaps he will listen to the EU’s own scientific advisers. On Thursday advisers to the European Environment Agency called for the target to be scrapped.
“The overambitious 10 per cent target is an experiment, whose unintended effects are difficult to predict and difficult to control,” they said.
However, Barroso did warn of a human tragedy caused by high food prices and called on EU countries to lift their giving to affected countries.
The link between the EU policies and food shortagesis beginning to worry some in the Berlaymont. It is seeking to end export subsidies that see cheap food dumped on poor countries. However, there are still many high tariff barriers that prevent poor farmers exporting to the EU. Doubtless this debate will become a centrepiece of the haggling over the mid-term review of the common agricultural policy this year.
France is already talking about the need for “food security” while Franz Fischler, former agriculture commissioner who keeps on top of the issues, told me recently that Europe has a duty to feed itself and the world.
Meanwhile, Andris Piebalgs, the energy commissioner, has been making the case for stimulating investment in farm productivity through the biofuels target.
He wrote in a recent blog post: “Substantial tracts of arable land lie fallow since the collapse of the collective farming system used during Communist times in many of the new Member States. The EU’s ambitious but realistic 10% target will provide the market pull stimulation that these farmers need to face a future market based agricultural economy and less dependence on EU subsidies.”
But with Gordon Brown among others calling for a change of stance, I wouldn’t advise any farmer to start sowing the seeds of biofuel crops until they are sure of exactly what they will reap.
Thanks, Piebalgs the energy commissioner is correct, and the time is now !
1) Europe can grow sugarcane,jatropha,rapeseeds,corn, algae ,extra cellulosic modified plants ,your invention ,etc., for ETHANOL JET FUEL as well as car/truck/turbine/boat/etc/. uses, the EU
countries must get together and start planning and growing, today ! the enemy it’s only the Oil-Neocon lobby’s crying for their monopoly to keep us addicted exclusively to their oil/gas racket and to the Middle East, which has become WITH THEIR FANATIC RELIGIONS AND LAND OCCUPATION POLICIES the nightmare and shame of the Human Race !
2) EU and the USA are right on the cliff, at 112 dollars a barrel and going up non-stop with speculation and fabricated off-areas ( Arctic Sea ,etc.) it’s a race to bring down the “gentiles world” under the sword of tight supply and to social and economic bankruptcy, so will Europe stand up and and get going TOGETHER today ? or will they go on talking about it while doing nothing for months on end ?
3) an Investment of just 30.000 million euros ( a fraction of what the central banks waste to bail-out the big private banks , investment houses and their bankers ,advisers and lawyers when they wreck their greedy deals ) will start growth areas in all EU countries, testing crops and yields, making sure all seeds ,if “gm” for maximum yield ,are labeled as such and totally out of the human and animal food chain, with color and taste markers,etc.( most g.m. corn and soy was intended for fuel,never for human food ).
4) this is the time for all the citizens of Europe ( and America if we had normal politicians ) to get together and confront the energy disaster looming if we don’t act right now ! ,Patriotism starts with Energy Independence, National Security starts with full Fuel Stocks and a working and inventing community, this is a continental challenge and we must win.
5)one day soon we will grow high yield ethanol plants under solar panels/concentrators/thermal tubes and wind turbines feeding batteries and hydrogen into fuel-cells ,the first step is massive ethanol fields as well as the best freshest organic crops for human food, what are we waiting for ? Europe is about search and excellence.
Posted by: blogger | April 10th, 2008 at 8:12 pm | Report this commentGreat article but I was wondering what the missing word(s) in this sentence are:
“The link between the EU policies and is beginning to worry some in the Berlaymont.”
Thanks.
Posted by: Hazel F | April 11th, 2008 at 9:37 am | Report this commentHazel, thankyou. Sorry for the missing word competition. It is in there now and is “food shortages”
Posted by: Andrew Bounds | April 11th, 2008 at 11:35 am | Report this comment[…] FT : Commission ploughs a lone furrow on biofuels […]
Posted by: Biofuels information - the latest news « The Coffee House | April 14th, 2008 at 10:59 pm | Report this commentLone furrow? What about $3 billion biofuel subsidies by the US? But hey Bush promised $100 million for famine relief.Slogan “FOOD BIOFUELS ARE GENOCIDE”
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