EU to see tar sands increase

Scrapping fuel quality directive target would lead to influx of tar sands and increase in emissions, according to US report.

Imports of oil from Canadian tar sands into the European Union will increase substantially unless the EU changes existing policy, a new report released today (24 January) has concluded.

The increase would be even higher if a greenhouse gas target in the fuel quality directive (FQD) is scrapped in 2020, as suggested in the communication from the European Commission on 2030 climate targets.

Under a ‘business as usual’ scenario, tar sands imports to Europe would rise to over 700,000 barrels per day by 2020, up from 4,000 barrels in 2012, according to the report from the US Natural Resources Defense Council. This is the equivalent of an additional six million cars on EU roads, because oil from tar sands is a more intensive process to extract and thus generates more emissions.

The ‘business as usual’ scenario for 2020 is based on the lax implementation of the fuel quality directive currently being done by member states. If the EU’s clean fuel standard, set out in the directive, were comprehensively implemented this scenario could be avoided.

But rather than increasing implementation of the rules, the Commission said this week that it wants to scrap the emissions reduction requirements of that directive. The fuel quality directive contains a requirement that fuel suppliers must lower the greenhouse gas emissions of their fuels by 6% by 2020.

But a communication on 2030 climate targets, adopted on Wednesday (22 January), contains a line saying the Commission does not want to continue this target after then.

“The Commission does not think it appropriate to establish new targets for renewable energy or the greenhouse gas intensity of fuels used in the transport sector or any other sub-sector after 2020,” the communication says. “The assessment of how to minimise indirect land-use change [ILUC] emissions made clear that first generation biofuels have a limited role in decarbonising the transport sector.”

Food and poverty campaigners have complained that the EU requirement, which has resulted in an increase use of biofuels, is driving up food prices and actually increasing emissions because of ILUC.

But environmental campaigners worry that without the fuel quality directive’s emissions target, the door will be open for the increased import of tar sands.

“The Commission is using the climate and energy package as an excuse to quietly scrap the FQD – the best EU law aimed at lowering emissions from transport fuel,” said Nusa Urbancic of green transport group T&E. “This is good news for oil companies and Alberta, with its high-carbon tar sands, but bad news for Europe in our move towards a more sustainable transport system.”

The study released today concludes that if the fuel quality directive is not fully implemented now, the higher imports of tar sands, as a result of new pipelines in the US and Canada, would actually increase the average carbon intensity of Europe’s fuels by 1.5% in 2020.

The EU has already been locked in a battle with Canada over how to define the emissions intensity of tar sands, which is largely found in the province of Alberta. The Canadian government has said that the EU’s estimation of higher emissions from tar sands is unfairly penalising Canadian oil because Canadian producers account fully for the emissions of their extraction process, whereas their competitors extracting conventional oil in the Middle East are not. The Canadians say that the premium on emissions value attached to oil sands should not be so high.