Euractiv published two articles which have an interesting link. In one article citing François Gayet, secretary-general of the AeroSpace and Defence Industries Association of Europe (ASD), that from 2020 the air industry will grow carbon neutral, he said “However, manufacturers are “a bit cautious” about the sustainability of biofuels, especially the use of non-food crops, for example.”

In another article Euractiv reports that environmental NGOs are sueing the European Commission over the publication of bio fuels reports. Nusa Urbancic of transport campaign group T&E is cited “Current EU biofuels policy guarantees that Europe will use lots of biofuels, but it doesn’t guarantee reductions in greenhouse gas emissions – in fact it seems likely it will make things worse. The first step to fixing this broken policy must be full transparency about what the true impacts are”

The interesting thing here is that on the one side the air industry sees itself on the right path to carbon neutrality where bio fuels will be of paramount importance but admits at the same time that they are not fully convinced of the ecological sustainability of the bio fuels. On the other side is the EU Commission which defends for what ever reasons its decision to get 10% of its road fuels from renewables, such as bio fuels, by 2020. Bio fuels for road transport and aircraft fuels from renewables have the same biomass as a source.

This supports the overall impression from various proceedings that some parts of industry, in this case the air industry, are thinking more realistic and sometimes even more ahead than the government.

Up to now no satisfying strategy has been found to ensure the ecological sustainability of bio fuels for transportation. Large amounts of these so called bio fuels are made from palm tree oil which is grown on huge plantation in e.g. Indonesia for which former rain forest was burnt down. This can cancel out any benefits sought from the biofuels. There are many promising concepts like algae or jatropha, which would not need land used for food crops, but there is still a lot of research necessary.Jatropha only needs land that has low fertility, it is actually a pioneer plant that can be used to turn infertile land into fertile land so that later food can be grown on the land.

So both, car industry as well as air industry, can not be sure that they will be bailed out by the bio fuels, other means to reduce CO2 emissions from transport remain important: avoid traffic by short distances, public transport, energy efficient vehicles and electric cars that can be charged with wind, solar and other renewable power to name the most important instruments.