EU short of 6pc fuel CO2 intensity cut target

Many EU member states look set to miss their target to reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity of transport fuels by at least 6pc by the end of 2020, according to a new report by the European Commission.

The commission noted that average GHG intensity of fuels and energy supplied in the 28 reporting member states in 2018 was 90.6 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per megajoule (g-CO2eq/MJ), 3.7pc lower than the 2010 baseline set under the EU's Fuel Quality Directive (FQD). The FQD does not take indirect land-use change (ILUC) emissions into account when assessing compliance with the minimum 6pc reduction target. If ILUC emissions are taken into account, the average GHG intensity in 2018 was only 2.1pc lower than in 2010.

Fossil fuels made up 94.8pc of total fuel supply in 2018 — the last year for which full official EU figures are available — and 5.2pc was provided by biofuels. No renewable fuels of non-biological origin were reported in 2018 nor upstream emission reductions (UER).

The directive also sets quality requirements for fuels in road transport. Here, the commission noted a "high" level of compliance with quality limits. Finland and Sweden — which have relatively high proportions of biofuels in their fuel mixes or 8pc and 23pc, respectively — were the only EU countries in 2018 to have already exceeded the 6pc reduction target for 2020. The Czech Republic, France, Germany, Netherlands, Poland and Slovakia were above or only slightly below an indicative intermediate reduction target of 4pc, set for 2017. But several countries — notably Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Romania, Slovenia and the UK — reported GHG reductions below 2pc in 2018.

The European Environmental Agency (EEA), which prepared the data for the commission, noted that the two countries which reduced emission intensities the least between 2010 and 2018 — Croatia (0.1pc) and Estonia (0.9pc) — have fuel mixes with much lower proportions of biofuels. Estonia's biofuels were also found to have relatively high emission intensities of 35.1g-CO2eq/MJ, compared with Finland's 14 g-CO2eq/MJ and Sweden's 14.5 g-CO2eq/MJ.

By Dafydd ab Iago