EU to toughen environment criteria for biofuels

The EU is to set tougher environmental criteria for biofuels after acknowledging that the drive for transport fuels produced from crops has done unforeseen damage, the European Commission said. Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said in a BBC interview the EU had initially underestimated the danger to rainforests and the risk of forcing up food prices from its policy of setting binding targets for the use of biofuels.

"We have seen that the environmental problems caused by biofuels and also the social problems are bigger than we thought they were. So we have to move very carefully," he said.

"We have to have criteria for sustainability, including social and environmental issues, because there are some benefits from biofuels," Mr Dimas said.

EU leaders set a mandatory target last March that at least 10 per cent of transport fuel should come from biofuels by 2020.

Mr Dimas told the BBC it would be better to miss the target than meet it by harming poor people or damaging the environment.

EU energy spokesman Ferran Tarradellas Espuny told a news conference the Commission would stick to the 10 per cent target in implementation proposals to be unveiled on January 23 because it was an obedient servant of the bloc's political masters.

"However, certainly we will do that in a way that's going to cause no damage or at least less damage than if we used fossil fuels to achieve the same target," he said.

Mr Tarradellas said the biofuels used would have to achieve a net reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, blamed for global warming, and not damage rainforests, as well as meeting other unspecified criteria which would be announced next week.

Biofuels that failed to meet the standards would not be allowed on the European market, he said.

EU officials said commissioners were still wrangling over the issue, part of a comprehensive package of energy and climate change legislation designed to make the 27-nation EU a world leader in the fight against global warming.

A coalition of environmental and development pressure groups wrote to EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs last week asking him to set much tougher standards for biofuel production or abandon the mandatory transport fuel target altogether.

"Large-scale biofuel production can cause negative indirect or knock-on impacts such as increasing food and feed prices and increasing water scarcity, which would lead to negative impacts on the world's poor," the 17 non-government organisations, including Oxfam and Friends of the Earth, said in a statement.