Scrapping renewable tag for food biofuels ‘will hurt climate’

Copa-Cogeca has warned against removing food-based biofuels from the list of transport fuels that count as renewable ahead of the publication of a revised EU Renewable Energy Directive on Wednesday.

Leaked documents suggest the European Commission plans to reduce support for food-based biofuels in favour of growing the ‘advanced biofuels’ market instead.

But Copa-Cogeca said that biofuels produced from crops such as rapeseed oil are more environmentally-friendly than fossil fuels and removing their renewable status would undermine climate and transport decarbonisation efforts.