France, which currently holds the presidency of the European Union, may apply pressure to have the EU’s 10% biofuels target reconsidered.
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French ecology minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet told Reuters on Monday that: “Probably we will be obliged to call into question or postpone the 10% objective.” She said that the EU should have set sustainability criteria for the fuel before it set the targets.
The EU agreed in 2007 that 10% of all transport fuel should come from renewable sources by 2020. However, it emerged during 2007 and 2008 that some biofuels were more carbon-intensive than fossil fuels, and that they could be giving rise to higher global food prices, and governments pushed for sustainability criteria to be applied. Environmentalists moved from supporting biofuels to be against their implantation completely.
In early June the Italian economic development minister, Claudio Scajola, reached a similar conclusion to the French minister. “We took with too much haste the decision on an objective that is not reachable,” he said.
This week the UK is expected to release the Gallagher Report – a review of the country’s biofuel policies – and adapt its position accordingly.
The European Commission is working on a set of environmental and social criteria for biofuels, using voluntary criteria established for the UK.
