Sostenibilità ambientale e sociale dei biocarburanti. Le politiche dell’Unione europea

The European Union assigns a key role to biofuels in its strategy to combat climate change. However, beyond climate change, the support for such fuels is also linked to other aspects, such as energy security (with the reduction in the dependence on fossil fuels) and the growth of rural economies. Alongside these opportunities, many problems have also emerged: the increase of deforestation, the use of large areas previously used for food production, the so-called land grabbing (i.e. the large-scale acquisition of land in developing countries), the erosion of customary land use rights and, lastly, the paradoxical negative effects on the climate associated with direct and indirect changes in land use. The present paper therefore intends to analyse whether and how the European legislator has taken these negative aspects into consideration. This is clearly an evolving field: the aforementioned problems, not adequately considered by the directive 2003/30/EC, have been at least partly addressed by the subsequent legislation; thus, the directive 2009/28/EC defines sustainability criteria so that the energy by biofuels can be taken into account for the achievement of national targets (for example, biofuels shall not be made from raw material obtained from land with high biodiversity
value or with high carbon stock), while in the directive (EU) 2015/1513 the socalled ILUC (indirect land use change) effect is specifically addressed, trying to promote the transition from food-based biofuels to more advanced types of biofuels. In conclusion, it is outlined how the issues related to biofuels are considered in the proposal for a new directive on renewable energy sources.