EU will not rule out biofuels target reduction in wake of food-vs-fuel concerns

The European Union said that it is considering a change in its biofuels targets following protests from academics and environmental groups over the impact of biofuels on food prices. Prime Minister Janez Jansa of Slovenia, who holds the EU presidency, told reporters at an EU conference that “Quite certainly there will be more analysis,” and declined to say that revisions had been ruled out.

Members of the European Parliament in Brussels recently approved the emissions reduction plan proposed by the European Commission. The package of proposals included proposals on emission cuts, renewable sources, carbon capture and revision of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, with a stated goal of reducing EU greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent and increasing the share of renewable energies in the energy consumption by 2020 to 20 percent.New EU laws are expected to ban the importation of biofuels grown in forests, grassland or wetlands, and is expected to affect palm oil based imports due to deforestation, South American ethanol and biodiesel with grassland or forest land use issues, and US corn ethanol due to lower emissions savings.

In Europe, the rapporteur in the European Parliament for the European Union’s Fuel Quality Directive said that the EU goal of 10% of all transport fuels coming from biofuels is too high. “The second generation of biofuels are not yet in practice and, currently, there are not enough good ones. There is a feeling among some MEPs that a 10% target is too high,” said Dorette Corbey, a Dutch socialist, speaking the World Biofuels Markets expo in Brussels.

The EU is also facing a stalemate over implementation of biofuels sustainability standards. The European Parliament wants sustainability criteria to be included in the EU Fuel Quality Directive, while the European Commission said that the criteria is already included in the January 23rd directive on renewables, which instructed that 10% of all transport fuel consumption in the EU be sourced from biofuels by 2020. The EU has agreed that biofuels must deliver a life-cycle CO2 savings of 35 percent to count towards the 10 percent target.

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