International Law and Biofuel Issue Related to Climate Change
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY JURIDICUM, FACULTY OF LAW INTERNATIONAL LAW AND BIOFUEL ISSUE RELATED TO CLIMATE CHANGE Mrs. Elisabeth GIGOT MASTER THESIS IN THE FULFILLMENT OF THE MASTER OF LAW (LL.M) IN INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL LAW Supervisor ANNIKA NILSSON Doctor of Environmental Law at the University of Stockholm MAY 2013 Dedication I would like to thank Annika Nilsson, for her good advices and the time she spent reading and correcting this paper. I would like to thank particularly Marcela Scarpellini and Freya Lücke for their moral support. I am as well very grateful to Celestina Mahovic, for reading my paper and helping me thanks to her feedbacks. 2 on 44 Contents Introduction..........................................................................................................................................4 Reasons of the study........................................................................................................................4 Purpose of the study.........................................................................................................................6 Methodology....................................................................................................................................6 Outline.............................................................................................................................................6 Part 1: International agreements on climate change and biofuel regulation.........................................8 1.1 A well designed accounting in theory .......................................................................................9 1.1.1 Combustions from biodiesel are carbon-neutral in accounting rules.................................9 1.1.2 LULUCF accounting rules have consequences on biofuel sustainability surveillance. 11 1.1.2.1 Adverse effect of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities...............................11 1.1.2.2 The choice of the activity based approach. ..............................................................11 1.1.2.3 The absence of accounting emissions from Indirect Land Use Change ..................13 1.2 The sustainability of biofuel production in the Clean Development Mechanism...................14 1.3 Conclusion on the Kyoto Protocol...........................................................................................15 Part 2: Private actors and biofuel production standards.....................................................................17 2.1 Legal nature of standards: Voluntary does not mean without impact......................................17 2.1.1 Standards rely on certification. .......................................................................................17 2.1.1.1 Certification, an enforcement mechanism. ..............................................................17 2.1.1.2 Accreditation: a mechanism to attest the credibility of certification. ......................19 2.1.2 The attractiveness of the standard is a condition of its efficiency....................................19 2.1.2.1 Sustainable biofuel standards seem appealing.........................................................20 2.1.2.2 Standards are used as marketing tools......................................................................20 2.2 The inconsistent multiplication of voluntary schemes on biofuel sustainability.....................21 2.2.1 Overview: Voluntary-based initiatives are numerous and diverse. .................................21 2.2.2 A lack of coordination between schemes, causing confusion and risk of “shopping behaviour” by companies..........................................................................................................22 2.2.3 The efforts towards coordination ....................................................................................23 2.3 Conclusion...............................................................................................................................24 Part 3: Does international trade law allow biofuel regulation?..........................................................25 3.1 The Spanish case......................................................................................................................26 3.2 Differentiating biofuels and influencing international market, a lost cause?..........................28 3.2.1 The GATT 1994...............................................................................................................28 3.2.1.1 The likeness..............................................................................................................29 3.2.1.2 A discriminatory measure? ......................................................................................30 3.2.1.3 Article XX of the GATT...........................................................................................32 3.2.2 The other agreements.......................................................................................................33 3.2.2.1 Are the measures affected by the Technical Barrier on Trade agreement?..............33 3.2.2.1.1 Scope................................................................................................................33 3.2.2.1.2 The obligations.................................................................................................34 3.2.2.2 The Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures and the Agreement on Agriculture................................................................................................................................35 3.2.2.2.1 The SCM Agreement.............................................................................................36 3.2.2.2.2 The AoA................................................................................................................37 3.3 Conclusion and opening: The GSP program, a tool for the domestic tactic? ....................37 CONCLUSION..................................................................................................................................39 Bibliography.......................................................................................................................................40 3 on 44 INTRODUCTION Reasons of the study Hurricane Sandy hit the Caribbean and the USA in October 2012 influenced by a warmer Atlantic ocean this serves to remind us that adverse effects of climate change are already taking place 1. Scientific evidence links global warming with anthropogenic activities causing an increased of the concentration of Green house gases (GHG) in the atmosphere over the years2. The most important source of GHG emissions is fossil fuel combustion for electricity, transportation, industry and housing3. In order to lower these emissions, alternative energies are under development. Biofuel is one of them. Biofuel is a fuel produced from biomass, that is to say non-fossil organic material. There are currently two main strands: Oil industry and derivatives (biodiesel) and alcohol from sugars, starch, cellulose or hydrolyzed lignin (bioethanol). Mostly biofuel currently produced is the 1 st generation of biofuel, made from agricultural crops that could have been used for food. The second generation of biofuel, made from wastes, does not compete with food production and releases even less GHG than the 1st generation4, but is yet in experimentation. Historically and still in several countries, biomass remains the main source of energy, for instance it is over three quarters of the share in energy in Nepal, Laos, Bhutan, Cambodia, Sri Lanka 5. In industrialized countries, biomass has started to be used for biofuel from the 1970's. Yet, only recent environmental concerns and the high cost of oil made bioenergy popular in the 2000s. Production of biofuels has many benefits. It could serve rural development policies 6, or be used to reach energy independence from oil or gas, which are mainly imported from Middle-East 7 and Russia8. Furthermore, the carbon emitted during the combustion of biofuel has previously been fixed by plants (palm, rapeseed, corn, wheat, wood, ...) during photosynthesis. The “carbon footprint”9 of biofuel seems then a priori neutral10. That is why biofuel can be seen a less polluting alternative to fossil fuel and encouraged by 1 Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, “CLIMATE CHANGE AND HURRICANE SANDY”, October 2012, http://www.c2es.org/ 2 Core Writing Team, Pachauri, R.K. and Reisinger, A. (Eds.), IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007, IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland. pp 104 3 United States Environmental Protection Agency, “Sources of Greenhouse Gas Emissions”, http://www.epa.gov (visited 4 May 2013) 4 Michael Wang. “Updated Energy and Greenhouse Gas Emission Results of Fuel Ethanol” (Center for Transportation Research, Argonne National Laboratory, USA, 2009) 5 FAO, “Review of Wood Energy Data in RWEDP Member Countries” (Field Document No. 47, Bangkok, 1997) 6 Leturque, Henri and Wiggins, Steve “Biofuels: Could the South benefit?” (London: Overseas Development Institute, 2009) 7 U.S. Energy Information Administration, “PETROLEUM & OTHER LIQUIDS : U.S. Imports by Country of Origin”, released 4/29/2013 available at http://www.eia.gov (visited 5 May 2013) 8 Energy Dialogue EU–Russia. “The Tenth Progress Report”(European Commission, 2009) pp. 4–6 9 The total sets of greenhouse gas emissions caused by an organization, event, product or person 10 A. Magdziarz, M. Wilk and M. Zajemska, “Analysis of the biomass combustion process by the numerical