Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-03-23-Speech-3-270-000"
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"en.20110323.22.3-270-000"2
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"Mr President, firstly I would like to thank the Conference of Presidents for making time for this debate this week at very short notice. I would also like to thank the Commissioner for coming here at such a late hour to discuss this issue, which is very important for our Parliament.
On the face of it, this looks like a very technical issue. It is about implementing measures for the Fuel Quality Directive and setting baseline or default values for greenhouse gas emissions for transport fuels. The real, very serious issue is: how serious are we in the European Union about tackling emissions from transport? We know that around 20% of greenhouse gas emissions come from transport. We know that figure is rising, unlike in the housing and energy sectors, where the figure is falling. Cleaning up our transport fuels is a key part of the fight against climate change and that is why the Fuel Quality Directive is so important.
That brings me to this question of tar sands and oil shale. Parliament was expecting the Commission’s implementing proposals on the directive at the end of last year. There was a delay and we know the reason for this was because there was an internal debate in the Commission about whether to give a separate value to tar sands. We were told that the reason we could not have the measures was because there was no scientific study to back up the Commission proposal. In early drafts from the Commission, however, we saw there was a separate value for tar sands in the consultation papers, but in a later draft that value had disappeared.
Thanks to you, Madam Commissioner, we now have a study on tar sands. That study, which came out two months ago, shows something that other studies have already shown, i.e. that greenhouse gas emissions from Canadian tar sands are on average 107.3g of CO
per megajoule, compared with 87.1g for conventional fuels. For shale oil it shows a rate of 122 and 139g of CO
per megajoule. In other words, it shows that these fuels are dirtier than conventional oil. Now we have the studies, I am hoping that we will hear from the Commissioner tonight that we are going to see a proposal to implement the Fuel Quality Directive.
I said at the beginning that this is not just a technical issue. Last week, many MEPs who are here tonight received a petition from thousands of European citizens who are very concerned about this issue. They want what I want, which is proper, fair labelling of tar sands and oil shales. We often hear that the EU is leading the way on climate change, but California has already put in place a low-carbon fuel standard which assesses tar sands as high-carbon.
I know there has been a lot of lobbying about this, we have all heard about it, we have met the different lobbyists, and even now that we know that tar sands and oil shale are dirtier than conventional oil, we are now being told ‘no, let us have more studies, let us have more time’. But we have the facts on tar sands now, so I do not see any reason to delay. Tar sands are one of the most polluting ways of producing transport fuel known to man. It follows that they should be given a different categorisation in the Fuel Quality Directive, otherwise there is nothing to stop transport fuels getting dirtier under the Fuel Quality Directive instead of cleaner.
Commissioner Hedegaard, I know you will hear in a moment how many of our colleagues from all groups across the House share our concerns. You are known for your commitment to tackling climate change and are respected for it in this House. We want to work with you to deliver your low-carbon roadmap to actually cut emissions from transport by 60% as you announced last week, so I hope that tonight you are going to come here with some good news for us and tell us that in the next few weeks we will have that implementing standard and we will have a higher value for tar sands and oil shale."@en1
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