European renewable ethanol producers have launched a legal challenge to the EU’s FuelEU Maritime Regulation. The industry seeks partial annulment of FuelEU Maritime Regulation for failing to consider proven emissions-reduction benefits of sustainable biofuels such as renewable ethanol.
Companies representing nearly all of the EU’s production of renewable ethanol are seeking to annul a section of the legislation that considers crop-based biofuels to have the same emission factors as the least favourable fossil fuel pathway.
As a result of that provision, the FuelEU Maritime Regulation de facto excludes Renewable Energy Directive (RED)-compliant crop-based biofuels from the decarbonization objectives of the maritime sector.
The EU’s patchwork approach to crop-based renewable ethanol – confirming its sustainability and importance in the Renewable Energy Directive but sidelining it in FuelEU Maritime and RefuelEU Aviation – is more than just discriminatory. It also jeopardizes the EU’s ability to meet ambitious decarbonization targets. Given the importance of achieving Europe’s goals for climate change mitigation, energy independence, food security, and strategic autonomy, the EU should make better use of proven domestic solutions such as renewable ethanol, said David Carpintero, Director General of the European Renewable Ethanol Association (ePURE).
Multiple grounds
The legal action is based on several arguments, including among others that the European Parliament and the Council:
- committed a manifest error of assessment by failing to rely on scientific and technical data in preparing their policy on the environment;
- violated the principle of proportionality by considering that RED-compliant crop-based biofuels have the same emission factors as the least favourable fossil fuel in maritime transport; and
- violated the principle of equal treatment because the methodology used to calculate the GHG intensity of the energy used on board ships is not consistent with RED’s biofuel GHG emission calculation.
The challenge was filed by members of ePURE, the European Renewable Ethanol Association, along with Pannonia Bio Zrt.
The legal application for annulment was filed with the General Court of the European Union on December 18, 2023.
Europe will be a climate laggard when the global maritime and aviation markets harmonize around solutions such as sustainable crop-based biofuels that the EU has ruled out but that are affordable, scalable, and have low carbon intensity. EU investors like Pannonia are now choosing the USA for new investments in large part because EU transport decarbonization policies are unstable. That kind of policymaking is irresponsible, and legally it violates the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, said Mark Turley, CEO of ClonBio Group, the owner of Pannonia.