Italy, not biofuels hold back EU energy deal
When it comes to European Union efforts toward a climate action plan, the devil, it turns out, is in the details.
All of the member states of the EU are willing to commit their countries to draw 20 percent of their energy from renewable resources, reduce CO2 emissions by 20 percent, and become 20 percent more energy efficient by 2020. That overall goal was agreed upon in March 2007.
In January 2008, the agreement was refined with more details including action plans in different categories for countries to follow. One of these demanded that 10 percent of all road transport fuel come from renewable resources by 2020. According to that January proposal, the majority of renewables would be allowed to be from biofuels.
Concerns were raised over the global impact of biofuels, and the entire package became deadlocked over the issue.
You can read the drama of this on the blog of Andris Piebalgs, the EU energy commissioner who's also repeatedly addressed the fierce European debate over biofuels.
As anyone who's read anything about biofuels in the last few years knows, it's a controversial topic not just in Europe but everywhere.
Some see biofuels as a permanent addition to the go-to list of energy sources and deny they're responsible for any food shortages. Others see it as a reasonable midterm solution until better technology can be implemented. Many countries with a heavy agricultural base covet the lucrative market and money it can bring their people.
Others raise concerns that biofuels are responsible for soaring food prices and shortages, since food producers are forced to compete against energy companies for grain supplies. Arguably, the growing world demand for those crops are also responsible for indirect land-use change--the destruction of wetlands and rain forests to make room for more farmland.
Taking these views into consideration, EU members finally settled on a tentative deal over the biofuels issue on Thursday.
A third of the 10 percent of road transport fuel required to come from renewables must be from electric cars and trains.
But Italy still blocked the deal from passing. (The European Parliament and all 27 EU nations have to approve the deal in order for it to become a law.)
Italy wants a clause included in the final agreement that would allow countries to review the policy again in 2014.
Both environmentalists and EU member countries against the clause argued it would hold up investment in alternative energies. With an escape clause, they say, alternative energy investors will take a wait-and-see approach until 2014 in case parts of the EU energy plan are dumped.
French Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who is also the current president of the EU, announced that the proposal will be revisited on December 11 and 12 at the European Council meeting in Brussels.
In a software-driven world, it's easy to forget about the nuts and bolts. Whether it's cars, robots, personal gadgetry or industrial machines, Candace Lombardi examines the moving parts that keep our world rotating. A journalist who divides her time between the United States and the United Kingdom, Lombardi has written about technology for the sites of The New York Times, CNET, USA Today, MSN, ZDNet, Silicon.com, and GameSpot. E-mail her at candacelombardi@gmail.com. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET. 
These biofuels are just as bad, if not worse than oils, gases and the like.
More research should be done with hydrogen power, there is plenty of water out there, enough to improve on solar, and maybe even figure out something else entirely.
Likewise, we are currently experiencing massive extinction of the species and diversity of flora and fauna. The timberlines have expanded upwards, many species have grown higher in elevations due to global climatic changes that was triggered by too much carbon participating in the active carbon circulation.
Yes, indeed carbon dioxide is needed for crops to produce fruits and there are some significant increases in carbon dioxide that some of our food crops have yielded better, but many plants are going extinct as well and some weeds went rampant too. Many plant species came and established where they are not supposed to, causing a lot of ecological disturbances. Can we afford all of these and call carbon dioxide a non-pollutant?
Yes, earth has experienced the global increase of carbon dioxide in eons past, that was accompanied by massive extinctions eliminating more than 90% of the previous species. Earth has no problem resurrecting back from those troubled times. Earth will equilibriate later when let alone, but I hope it doesn't eliminate mankind in the process.
I wouldn't say Earth is in a balanced system, it is balanced enough to the extent where it isn't "hell". (not the fire and brimstone hell, hell in the real sense)
Plus, what exactly is balanced in this context anyway?
Quite a few of the parameters change on a daily basis. In fact, gravity is pretty much the only real constant, even the sun is in ever changing moods.
But personally, i don't think humans will be wiped out if it comes to the next ice age, humans are smarter than most species that have come before.
We can go to planets, we can build buildings as high as you can see, reach almost any corner of the Earth.
I'm sure we could protect ourselves if it came to it.
"Cold war" bunkers actually require more to survive than an ice-age bunker ever would, which kind of puts it into perspective.
As long as we can generate energy in these underground complexes, we will survive.
They just have to be smart about designing them to prevent disease outbreaks and the like.
Hopefully, when the time comes, we will have enough DNA from all life on Earth so that nothing is lost forever, that would be saddening. (There are several of those projects as well, private from what i know)
The sea is the most worrying, since we have barely scratched the surface with sea life.
Yes I still have faith that humans won't be wiped out if only fossil fuels were to be the sole culprit of our demise. We will survive the carbon pollution and able to fix it, with our ingenuity and intellect (pending nanite invasions, overwhelming asteroid impacts and perhaps development of super germs that are then stolen by extremists to wipe us all out as the more likely cause).
If these measures had any real possibility of succeeding in the market right now, there wouldn't need to be some misguided government fiat forcing their use.
Let's just count how many times central planning has succeeded and failed...
- by zhogfan September 30, 2009 2:20 PM PDT
- Sorghum cane will be a big part of ethanol, grows on any kind of ground, requires very little pesticides, herbicides, and less water and fertilizer than corn.
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