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(Bloomberg) — The European Parliament blocked a move to strip soy-based biofuels of their renewable status, which would have phased out their contribution to European Union renewable energy targets by 2030.
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EU lawmakers objected to the methodology employed by the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, arguing it doesn’t take into account that EU-grown soy doesn’t drive deforestation. They also said the move would clash with the objectives of the EU’s protein plan to make the bloc more self-sufficient in such crops.
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The European Commission had proposed linking soy to a high risk of what it calls indirect land-use change, when exploiting existing farmland to grow the oilseed for biofuels leads to deforestation to produce food and feed crops elsewhere. A World Trade Organization panel largely sided with the EU in a case brought by Malaysia over the bloc’s classification of palm oil as posing such a risk, though it did also find some deficiencies in the bloc’s application of the rules.
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The European lawmakers said they did not object to palm oil being given a high ILUC risk status.
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The parliament called on the Commission to resubmit an updated proposal on the issue with changes to the methodology.
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The Union for the Promotion of Oil and Protein Plants welcomed the parliament vote, calling it “absurd” to “encourage European soybean cultivation to strengthen the bloc’s protein resilience” and designate soybeans as an ILUC feedstock, “thereby stripping away a key element of their value chain.”
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Also see: EU Aims to Cut Soy, Oilseed Import Dependency for Livestock
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The proposal would have discounted soybean oil obtained during soybean meal production from national biofuel blending mandates, the German agricultural industry association and lobby group said in a statement. That would also have impacted transport-sector climate targets.
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A European Commission spokesperson had no immediate comment.
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