UK Department for Transport provides update on RED II and E10 implementation

As discussions about the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union enter what many hope will be their final stages, the policy outlook remains pretty clouded. Like other sectors, the European biofuels industry has sought clarity from the UK government about what an independent UK will mean for legislation going forward.

Speaking at the World Ethanol & Biofuels conference in Brussels last week, Rachel Solomon Williams of the UK Department for Transport stressed that the government is committed to enhancing the role of biofuels in decarbonising the transport sector. “We’ve significantly ramped-up biofuels targets in the short-term and the medium-term, and set them into legislation,” she told attendees. “That puts us at the forefront of countries in Europe in terms of ambition on biofuels.”

Following on from the new deal reached on the Renewable Energy Directive II in June, which replaced a plan to phase out crop-based biofuels in the run up to 2030 with a cap on production at 2020 levels, the Department for Transport has committed to transposing the amended version of the directive into UK legislation. Biofuels producers can therefore be reasonably confident that the UK will not deviate from European targets after its exit from the EU.

Nevertheless, “there may be factors that we have to take into account when we know what final deal is reached,” Solomon Williams told the conference. “It’s a little hard to see if there is going to be any impact, but there’s not that we expect or plan. We want to hold a really strong trajectory for our policy in this area.”

Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation

The UK has also set its own targets for boosting the contribution of biofuels. Under its Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO), the Department for Transport has set the target of achieving a transport fuel mix of at least 12.4% biofuels by the year 2032. One of the proposed routes for achieving this share is through the introduction of E10.

To assess the best approach to E10 introduction, the Department for Transport initiated a consultation in July. The proposal put forward by the department was to increase the blend rate to 10%, alongside the reintroduction of an E5 “protection grade” to ensure that fuel can still be provided for non-compatible vehicles. Williams says that there are still 800,000 vehicles in the UK not advised by manufacturers to use E10, which amounts to approximately 2.5% of the total fleet.

“It’s pretty clear from the responses that people disagree with the proposal,” Williams told the conference. “Mostly for practical reasons, and also for financial and logistical reasons. We hear that and are discussing with ministers what we might do next.” The rejection of the proposal puts the department in a difficult position. “Unless the industry and the manufacturers change the message on that, we as government can’t come out and say actually it’s fine to put E10 in those vehicles,” Williams said.

Multipliers for waste-based fuels

Another aspect of the UK’s biofuels policy placed under close scrutiny at the conference is the use of “multipliers” for waste-based fuels, as originally set out under RED II. In order to stimulate the adoption of feedstocks with lower land use impact, waste-based fuels are double counted – meaning that a small increase in these fuels can play a disproportionate role in meeting the overall targets for renewable fuels.

Williams believes that the logic for applying multipliers is sound. “If you’re talking about a closed loop bio-economy, it’s obvious that products that have nowhere else to go except landfill should be at the top of the pile in terms of turning them into fuel. I think that’s a no brainer,” she told the conference. “At the moment multipliers are our way of encouraging that change and that incorporation, and I think it’s working.”

Many in the industry have taken the opposite view, however. Speaking later in the day, Novozymes’ Thomas Schrøder explained that the danger of using multipliers is that they can give an illusion of progress in meeting emissions reduction targets. He pointed out that there is a contradiction between the GHG reductions targets set out by the European Commission and RED II.

“In order to achieve the greenhouse gas emissions reductions set by the commission, we need to achieve about 12% - 15% renewables in our transportation sector,” Schrøder told the conference. “If you take away the multipliers, you get to maybe 1/3 or 2/3 of your own target. That means that what RED II is pointing to is probably far from being enough to realise what the Commission wants to achieve.”

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