The Biofrontiers platform launched policy recommendations on 11 October 2016, following over a year of discussion between industry and civil society on the technical, economic and environmental issues associated with developing the next generation of low-carbon fuels. The Biofrontiers platform concluded that incentives for advanced alternative fuels were justified, providing that sustainability could be assured. 

IEEP contributed to these discussions through research and policy advice. This focussed on the role and form that legislative sustainability criteria would need to take to ensure the environmentally sustainable development of advanced alternative fuels to 2030. This comes at a crucial time when the EU is working on new policies that would limit the region’s future emissions of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. These include both the revision of the Renewable Energy Directive and a new bioenergy policy post 2020. Defining effective and workable sustainability criteria is one of the critical steps in this process. 

Sustainability criteria should aim to provide the necessary safeguards for the use of bioresources in Europe requested by civil society, as well as the policy and investment certainty required by industry on the supply side. They must be effective in ensuring that bioresources are used in a sustainable manner, particularly for biofuels in Europe, when contributing to long-term economic development; and operational in that they can be implemented within the current and proposed future policy framework. 

Access the Biofrontiers synthesis report here.

More information on IEEP’s work in this area can be found here, or please contact Ben Allen(ballen@ieep.eu).