The consumption of inexperienced fuels in Spain falls 18% in 5 years: “There is a lack of political ambition and an excess of tax burden” | EUROtoday

The power sector is filled with paradoxes. The indisputable fact that in the course of the inexperienced fever Biofuel consumption in Spain has plummeted within the final 5 years is considered one of them. This is obvious from the evaluation that the renewable employers affiliation Appa has carried out on the most recent information from Eurostat, the statistical workplace of the European Commission, on the contribution of fresh power to move.

According to the conclusions that Appa disseminated yesterday, the true weight of renewables as a supply of power for transportation within the nation has been lower by nearly 18% between 2019 and 2022going from 1.7 to 1.4 million tons of oil equal (unit of power measurement generally known as toe).

But Spain’s official statistics on transport decarbonization, that’s, the figures accessible on the Eurostat portal in relation to the share of fresh power in nationwide transport, don’t replicate this drop. In reality, they present a marked upward trajectory of this indicator, going from 7.61% in 2019 to 9.68% in 2022.

Manuel Bustosdirector of the Biofuels space at Appa, explains to EL MUNDO that this hole between each printers responds to an “accounting trick” protected by the European regulatory framework itselfwhich artificially inflates state decarbonization statistics.

“Both the latest European renewables directive, as well as its previous version, set multiples for the consumption of renewables in transport that raise the accounting weight of clean energy consumption well above real consumption,” he signifies. This mannequin entails multiplying by sure parameters from the liters of biofuel consumed to {the electrical} power utilized in transportation.

“With double counting, there are raw materials, such as used cooking oils or some animal fats (residual raw materials), that For accounting purposes they will be worth double, but for real purposes they will be less., which would explain the decrease in real use. This double counting was introduced in 2018, hence the change in trend from that moment on,” level out enterprise sources acquainted with European rules.

Appa specialists have undone this accounting operation to reverse the impact of those multipliers and discover the true volumes of renewable power in transportation. The fruit of this evaluation has been a second graph that’s removed from the earlier one, the official one, as a result of not like the primary it does replicate this drop within the quantity of biofuels that has stopped fueling vehicles, vans, planes and ships within the final lustrum.

In element, this involution has meant a decline in the true share of renewable energies in transport, which, from representing 4.19% in 2019, and after rising to 4.8% in 2020 contaminated Due to the impact of the pandemic, it has had two downward intervals, standing at 4.23% in 2021 and in 3.57% in 2022.

According to the official quota for using renewables for transport, and though two years late, Spain was very shut in 2022 to reaching the ten% aim set by the EU for 2020. But if the true consumption graph is taken into consideration, Once the aforementioned accounting operation was dismantled, the nation stays far behind that goal, with a share of lower than 4% on the finish of final 12 months. For Bustos, the truth is that Europe and Spain have cheated the solitaire.

The fiscal burden

The renewable employers’ affiliation has already placed on the desk a shock plan with a collection of measures designed to reverse this setback. Among the proposed actions is a rise within the aims for using renewable sources in transportation that serves to mitigate the impact bubble of these multipliers.

“Europe saw this model as an incentive, and on paper it is, but it did not properly measure its impact on the real consumption of biofuels. There has been a lack of political ambition and an excess of fiscal burden“summarizes Bustos.

Years in the past, Europe utilized a zero fee for the half bio of every refueling. If 10% of biofuel is diluted in every liter of gasoline or diesel, as occurs at present in lots of gasoline stations, that share was exempt from the Special Tax on Hydrocarbons.

But the situation modified in 2013. Since then, the final fee of 21% VAT and the aforementioned particular tax are utilized to biofuels to the identical extent as the remainder of fossil fuels, that’s, with out a discount. According to information managed by the principle firms within the sector, the Treasury stays round 307 euros per 1,000 liters of biodiesel, the identical assortment as within the case of diesel, through which the earlier one is diluted. The equation is repeated within the case of bioethanol that’s combined with gasoline.

“We have been proposing many of these measures for years, but it is now that their urgency is more evident. We have reviewed the figures and we have seen that the 2022 data show that Biofuel consumption is falling and not temporarily. That, in turn, is weighing down the real share of renewables in transportation and, if renewables go down, fossil fuels go up,” concludes the Appa spokesperson.