Paper Titles & Abstracts

The EU's focus on energy efficiency and alternative fuel, such as biofuel, extends into transport which is one of the main consumers of energy and thus one of the main sources of pollution. By 2020 biofuel has to account for 10 per cent of all transport fuel. However achieving this target is not without problems as biofuel is problematic for several reasons; not only because it reduces the agriculture fields available for food crops, research has also shown that by including indirect emissions biofuel can have higher climate impact than fossil fuels. Simultaneously the EU has asserted itself as an environmental leader in renewable energies and has promoted certain values both externally but also internally. This paper examines how the EU's has developed certain normative values to address the environmental harm caused by transport. The paper uses Manners' concept of normative power to demonstrate how the EU is promoting renewable energies in the transport sector and combine it with historical institutionalism to explain how EU renewable energy policy towards transport is locked into a policy path which is not promoting sustainable energy for transport. Overall, the paper argues there is disconnection between the environmental values the EU tries to promote and its actual policy outputs. Moreover, this disconnect is caused by the growing biofuel industry has locked the EU into a policy path, which does not lead to more energy efficient transport.