EU biofuel production fails to take off

Biofuels are considered an alternative to fossil fuels, aimed at reducing greenhouse gases from the transport sector. Over the past ten years, the EU has spent about 430 million euros in subsidies to promote biofuels. However, the transition from laboratory research to actual large-scale production has not taken off and may still take many years. 

For a long time, one expectation was that natural products from agriculture and horticulture could serve as raw materials for new, environmentally friendly fuels. So far, the biofuels produced today are mainly used as additives to conventional petrol, diesel, and kerosene, and then only to a very limited extent.

Moreover, the availability of suitable biomass limits the use of biofuels. The European Commission expected that promoting and using biofuels would increase the EU’s energy independence. But in reality, many raw materials are mainly imported from third countries (e.g., imports of used cooking and frying oil from China, the United Kingdom, Malaysia, and Indonesia).

The European Court of Auditors concludes that European policies fail to initiate production and investments in this new sector. For example, aviation could become a major consumer of biofuel, about which the EU has already made decisions. These decisions set the required level of sustainable aviation fuel for 2030 at 2.76 million tons of oil equivalent, while the current potential production capacity is barely a tenth of that amount. 

The future of biofuels in road transport has also become unclear in recent years. The strong push toward electric vehicles, combined with the phase-out of new petrol and diesel cars by 2035, could also mean that biofuels may hardly be applied on a large scale in EU road transport.