German industry against multipliers in biofuels law

The planned introduction of multipliers for electricity and hydrogen in a draft law for the use of renewables in transport published by the German environment ministry (BMU) will remove first generation biofuels from the market by 2025, according to a joint statement of eight agricultural and biofuel industry associations.

The German government outlined its plans to toughen the country's biofuels legislation in a draft law at the end of September, which aims to implement the EU's revised Renewable Energy Directive (RED II). It proposes lowering the cap of the energy share of crop-based biofuels to 2.7pc by 2026 from 6.5pc in 2020, and wants to lift Germany's domestic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction obligation to 7.25pc by 2026. It also plans to introduce multipliers for hydrogen and electricity used in transport with the GHG savings generated by selling electricity to charge electric vehicles to be counted four-fold towards the country's GHG emissions reduction quota.

The government's plans will start a process of displacement at the expense of established sustainable biofuels that are indispensable for climate protection as the introduction of multipliers will disadvantage crop and even waste-based biofuels, the industry alliance said.

It urged the government to exclude multipliers from the draft legislation to ensure an even contribution of all instruments available to reduce domestic GHG emissions. The industry associations further demanded a step-by-step increase of the GHG quota from 6pc in 2020 to 16pc in 2030 and highlighted that a concrete outline for the next 10 years is a prerequisite for necessary investments in e-mobility, hydrogen-mobility and advanced biofuels. The statement adds that the contribution of conventional biofuels to climate targets needs to stay stable until 2030, while the government's target for the use of advanced biofuels needs to become more ambitious.

The joint statement was signed by the German farmers association DBV, bioenergy association BBE, the German biogas association, the waste-based fuels association MvaK, the oilseed growers and processing industry associations Ufop and Ovid and the German biofuels association VDB.

By Sophie Barthel