Biofuel regulation in the EU: A failure in the path towards environmental sustainability and food security?

Abstract

This chapter examines the European Union policy on biofuels from a legal point of view in order to discuss whether and to what extent the regulations have been shaped by the social and environmental issues connected to biofuels. Legal and policy documents will be analyzed in order to see how EU policy has addressed the questions arising from the growth of the biofuel sector and whether the efforts to solve the problems of fossil fuel dependence and greenhouse gas emissions have created other issues. The starting point will be the growing global demand for biofuels triggered by their public promotion in a number of countries worldwide. This will help to understand the magnitude of the phenomenon and of the concerns believed to stem from it. In the last part of this chapter, the current biofuel regulations will be discussed in order to see whether the proclamations became commitments, that is, if each social and environmental need was fully integrated into the regulations. Some of the environmental pressures have pushed for an amendment to current EU legislation, which could lead to a new ‘indirect land-use change’—‘indirect food insecurity’ (ILUC-IFI) dilemma. This could be interesting in terms of understanding how the EU is proceeding towards environmental and social sustainability in the production and use of biofuels. The main conclusion of this review is that although the EU policy articulates a range of principles and criteria on sustainability, each of which can be agreed upon, the real challenge has been in implementing the policy, which has not been without its problems.