Neste welcomes strict criteria for biofuels

Neste Oil in welcomes the transport biofuels targets and the strict environmental sustainability criteria for biofuels proposed by the European Commission. The Finnish oil company agrees that no feedstocks should be permitted if obtained from high-biodiversity land (forest with no significant human intervention) or land with high carbon stock (e.g. tropical wetlands).

Neste?s own NExBTL renewable diesel will conform to the sustainability criteria proposed by the Commission. It is the world’s cleanest diesel and has the potential to use a wide variety of feedstock. Neste Oil continues to develop its next generation fuel technology that can also use alternative non-edible feedstocks such as wood chip and the company is committed to continue working with a wide group of stakeholders in order to ensure sustainability practices and standards over the entire life cycle of NExBTL renewable diesel production.

“We believe that high standards of sustainability are essential to the long term success of the renewable fuels industry. Renewable fuels made from sustainable feedstocks can make an important contribution to reducing transport CO2 emissions,” says Risto Rinne, President and CEO of Neste Oil Corporation.

“Bio-feedstock producers, producing countries and users should work towards enforceable rules that simply make unsustainable biofuels production bad business. Sustainability should create the basis for profitable business operations in biofuels. These ideas should be built into legislation. The European Commission’s proposal is a positive move towards this direction,” added Rinne.

However, Neste believes that the proposal does not yet achieve technology neutrality for biofuels. The EU should evaluate technologies and feedstocks based on sound science, i.e. on their efficiency and greenhouse gas balance. The EU should keep the door open to technologies and feedstocks which do not even exist today to encourage further innovation.

“All in all, it is reassuring that the debate is entering a more mature stage and some of the ?silver bullet? hype is being displaced by a more sober assessment that there will be good and bad Biofuels”, said Rinne.