The EU Bioeconomy Strategy: A promising start, but…

The EU's newly released Bioeconomy Strategy confirms the importance of bioenergy to EU energy security and of biofuels to transport decarbonisation, but it continues to marginalise their use by creating unnecessary hierarchies for the deployment of agricultural biomass.

It therefore risks limiting the ability of sustainable biofuels such as renewable ethanol to contribute to EU ambitions for climate change mitigation, energy independence, food security, and agricultural and industrial autonomy.

As a new study from the Nova Institute confirms, using first-generation agricultural biomass to produce bio-based energy and materials in Europe results in important benefits for food security, biodiversity, agriculture and climate-change mitigation.

As they work to realise the Bioeconomy Strategy, EU policymakers should recognise that the bioeconomy and food/feed production in Europe are not opposing forces but rather work in synergy to build a sustainable future.