A Tough Row to Hoe

E.U. says it will be mindful of sustainability in boosting biofuels

Posted at 5:06 PM on 14 Jan 2008

Realizing that biofuel production can have negative social and environmental consequences, the European Commission says it will propose "strict conditions that biofuels used in the European market are produced in a sustainable way" instead of barreling ahead willy-nilly (because really, that would be crazy). The commission will announce specific climate-change mitigation plans later this month; it previously declared a goal for biofuels to make up 10 percent of all E.U. transportation fuel by 2020, but E.U. Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas says it would be better to miss that target than to meet it by harming the poor or the land. "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," says Dimas. "We have to have criteria for sustainability." Perhaps the E.U. could export some common sense across the pond?

sources:  Agence France-Presse, Reuters, BBC News, The Guardian
see also, in Grist:  A special series on biofuels