EU’s Renewable Energy Policy Could Cause more Climate Change

Ecologistas en Acción together with different international social and environmental organizations call on the European Parliament to reprove tomorrow the deficient Renewable Energy Directive that damages the climate, the human rights and the food production, in favour of the biofuel production.

Several social and environmental organizations [1] call/urge the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to vote against the Renewable Energy Directive, as well as against the current Fuel Quality Directive [2]. was signed during the last two weeks by nearly 10.000 citizens. It urges the MEPs to vote against the Renewable Energy Directive unless biofuels are removed from it.

The European Parliament will debate the proposed legislation of renewable energy on Tuesday 16th December and the voting will take place the following day.

Hundreds of civil society groups, NGOs and social movements, as well as many scientists and some UN officials – between them the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter – had called on the EU to drop the compulsory 10% biofuel target from the Renewable Energy Directive [3] because the current biofuel production pattern will cause irreversible harm to ecosystems, to biodiversity and to climate in order to meet it. It will also increase the systematically violations of the Human Rights of the rural and indigenous communities in the world [4].

Tom Kucharz from Ecologistas en Acción says, “Europe urgently needs an important reduction of energy consumption and a legislation which promotes genuinely sustainable renewable energy, such as wind and solar power, in order to help mitigate climate change.

Large-scale biomass for biofuel production with the current industrial agricultural model is not a renewable energy source. It does not belong in a renewable energy directive at all and should be removed from it. Millions of people face losing their land and livelihoods, even more people are at risk of going hungry, and we are sure that many ecosystems will be destroyed ever faster, thus accelerating climate change”.

In September, the European Parliament [5]. agreed a series of amendments to the text in order to try to minimise the most serious negative impacts of the bad known biofuels, and to prevent peat (natural carbon deposits made of biomass) from being burnt as ‘renewable energy'. Most of those amendments, including on peat, have been removed from the final text.

David Sánchez from ‘Amigos de la Tierra» says: “The ‘sustainability standards» that Parliament had pretended to introduce would not have been enough to prevent disastrous impacts on climate, people and biodiversity, but it is highly alarming that many MEPs do not seem to be aware that almost all of what they thought they had won as a reality has been removed from the text. The EU has boasted of leading global answers to climate change. The goal of biofuels means that the EU instead of that, takes the risk of leading the destruction of ecosystems that are vital to climate stabilisation. “Parliament must vote against a law which is has so many mistakes”.