The legal framework for biofuels in Belgium
Key words: biofuel, Belgium, HVB, HVP, law, decree, Belgian, customs
by Yola MINATCHY
Lawyer at the Brussels Bar
Cabinet Lallemand-Legros & Associés
European Law Department
Introduction
Has EU legislation on biofuels sounded the death knell for our dependence on oil in the transport sector? Towards the advent of an era of lignocellulosic technologies where sleek automobiles would slide down our streets without spitting harmful greyish spirals impregnated with carbon dioxide (CO2) ... A world where oil would no longer syncretise the hostage of stakes powers, wars in Iraq or southern Nigeria; where the time of wind turbines, marine catchments, solar panels, biomass would succeed the power of ambient petrochemistry. In the image of our child visions for a year 2000 "high-tech" green ...
The use of oil as fuel remains responsible for 84% of CO2 emissions. The CO2 content, a greenhouse gas, is currently at an unprecedented level in the atmosphere (1).
However, this high concentration of CO2 is recognized as the main cause of global warming, with an increase in the number of hurricanes, floods, droughts, sea level rise, melting glaciers and other climate disruptions. Oil is bad, its price is increasingly exorbitant, and yet our dependence on it is gradually increasing every year.
In order to stop this oxymoron from the transport sector, the European Commission has proposed legislation recommending the use of biofuels in excess of 20% of European gasoline and diesel consumption by 2020 in accordance with the Protocol of Kyoto of 1997. In our race for clean and renewable energy, Belgium will have to reduce its atmospheric emissions of CO2. Under the aegis of the sustainable development philosophy, the EU institutions have set up in 2003 a realistic legal framework for biofuels (I), requiring the urgent start of construction sites in the Belgian agro-resources production units (II). .
Community directives, a realistic legal framework for the development of biofuels
Transposition into Belgian law, constrained by local economic considerations.
Belgium is obliged by EU directives to market gasoline and diesel containing 2% biofuels before 31 December 2005, and 5,75% from 2010.
Conclusion
Combining economic development, search for new markets, energy independence, better respect for the environment, syncretizes the intertwining of the essential assets of biofuel. Agriculture, a changing economic sector in Europe, seems to be on the way to a challenge by embarking on the production of biofuel feedstock. Green biofuel represents a realistic alternative to petroleum products and the diversification of energy sources. Nevertheless, this major issue of sustainable development remains an economic and ecological solution in the future still uncertain.
Indeed, the race for clean energy does not mean the imminent end of our dependence on the widespread veins of the fluid of black gold. All the more so as a 2005 report from the geology department of the US government gracefully pinched the nerve of a widespread illusion about the scarcity of oil: "there is still crude underground, we have so far pumped only a third of Earth's oil. The year 2000 "high-tech" green is not yet for tomorrow ...
Source: DroitBelge.Net - News - October 13, 2005