MEPs urged to vote against raising biofuels target

04 July 2008 12:18  [Source: ICIS news]

LONDON (ICS news)--Friends of the Earth on Friday called for MEPs to vote against an increase in biofuels targets in next week’s vote in the European Parliament, as a leaked World Bank report pins 75% of food price rises on increased biofuels production.

 

Obtained by the UK's The Guardian newspaper, the unpublished document suggested biofuels were far more responsible for the global food crisis than previously thought and put the World Bank at loggerheads with the US government, which said plant-derived fuels contributed less than 3% to a rise in food prices.

 

“This report shows that when MEPs vote on biofuels targets next week they will have the fate of millions in their hands,” said biofuels campaigner Kenneth Richter from Friends of the Earth, the environmental group.

 

“MEPs should scrap biofuels targets and instead vote to double the fuel efficiency of new cars by 2020 - a move that would do far more to reduce our dangerous dependence on fossil fuels,” he added.

 

The European Commission is targeting 10% of fuels in the EU to be made up of biofuels by the year 2020, with the current target set at 2%, rising to 5.75% by 2010. 

 

In April, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Britain would vote to reduce EU biofuels targets if they were shown to be driving up global food prices.

 

Bookmark Simon Robinson’s Big Biofuels Blog for some independent thinking on biofuels

By: Mark Watts
+44 20 8652 3214

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