European Commission Disputes Opinion on Biofuels Emissions

The New York Times
September 14, 2011, 11:24 am
By JAMES KANTER

The European Commission acknowledged on Wednesday that reductions in greenhouse gas emissions linked to the use of some forms of bioenergy — burning wood for electricity, for example — could be overestimated because of a “serious accounting error.”

But the commission rejected the conclusions of a draft opinion by the European Environment Agency Scientific Committee that said that similar problems afflict the calculation of emissions from biofuels for transportation.

The draft opinion, described here in an earlier post, could have wide repercussions. It suggests that a far narrower variety of crops for biofuels and bioenergy should be grown and that organizations like the International Energy Agency and the United Nations probably need to lower their emissions forecasts related to the use of biofuels and bioenergy.

Read more