The EU has admitted that it failed to foresee problems raised by its policy to encourage motorists in Europe to drive vehicles which run on fuels derived from plants as part of efforts to cut carbon emissions.
The European Union’s environment chief said the bloc would rethink new draft rules on boosting the production of biofuels amid growing criticism by green campaign groups that the move could lead to rainforest destruction and social dislocation.
“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,” Stavros Dimas told the BBC on Monday, Jan. 14.
It would be better to miss the target than achieve it by harming the poor or damaging the environment, Dimas said.
In March last year, EU leaders agreed that 10 percent of the bloc’s road fuels should come from biofuels by 2020 as part of wider efforts to combat climate change and slash CO2 emissions. That goal was to be anchored in concrete legislation.
Too many negative consequences?
But criticism has grown steadily in past months about the negative impact of large-scale production of biofuels.
Critics have warned that expanding the growth of agricultural products such as corn, soybeans and rapeseed to make biofuels can lead to environmental damage, drive up food prices and lead companies to drive poor people off their land to convert it to fuel crops.
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