Reuters 6 May 08;
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union's agriculture commissioner criticized the media storm surrounding biofuels on Tuesday, but said the EU's executive Commission was open to raising targets for CO2 savings from biofuels from 2015.
The green credentials of biofuels have come under attack in recent weeks over fears they compete for farming land and push up food prices around the world.
"Those who see biofuels as the driving force behind recent food price increases have overlooked not just one elephant standing right in front of them, but two," EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel told a conference.
"The first elephant is the huge increase in demand from emerging countries like China and India ... The second elephant is the weather, and its effect on production," she added.
Bad weather hit cereal production in the EU, Canada, Russia, Ukraine and Australia last year, contributing to price rises, she added.
Fischer Boel replied to criticism that some biofuels can generate nearly as much CO2 as the fossil fuels they try to replace.
"It's because of anxieties like these that the Commission has proposed a safeguard: a given biofuel would count towards a member state's target only if it made a greenhouse gas saving of at least 35 percent compared to fossil fuels," she said.
"This would apply both to domestic production and to imports, and we are open to the idea of raising that threshold from 2015."
(Reporting by Pete Harrison; editing by Chris Johnson)
Biofuels answer to climate change: UN, EU
Yahoo News 6 May 08;
Biofuels must be developed more selectively to prevent competition with food-related crops, but they are still an answer to climate change, United Nations and European Union officials said on Tuesday.
"There is a concern that perhaps some of the investment and engagement in some of the biofuel production...in some cases did not go in the right direction," said Christophe Bouvier, European regional director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
"But I think it's a question of making sure that the correct biofuels are being promoted...we have to be vigilant," he said on the sidelines of a three-day conference on climate and energy security in Athens.
There are cases of crops such as corn where "productivity is very low" in terms of the energy consumed to produce fuel, Bouvier said.
But there are also crops such as sugar cane which "could be part of the solution" if grown "in the right places and with a sustainable production system," he said.
Speaking at the same conference, European Union Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said the EU was formulating new rules on biofuel development taking environmental and social concerns into consideration.
"The effects on the environment may not be all that beneficial, especially in the case of low-productivity biofuels," Dimas said.
Growing use of biofuels has been cited along with poor harvests due to drought, surging demand in Asia as living standards have risen, higher transport costs and trade restrictions for the rapid rise in food prices.
At least five demonstrators were killed Monday when Somali security forces fired at crowds protesting rising food prices in the capital Mogadishu and a fresh protest was held Tuesday.
Riots over soaring food costs also sparked riots last month in Egypt and Haiti as well as protests in other countries and restrictions on food exports in Brazil, Vietnam, India and Egypt.
Biofuels not raising food prices: German ministers
Reuters 6 May 08;
BERLIN (Reuters) - The global production of biofuels is not behind the recent rise in world food prices, two German ministers said on Tuesday.
Germany should retain its target of reaching 20 percent renewable energy use by 2020 including 10 percent biofuels, Agriculture Minister Horst Seehofer told a press conference.
Rising food prices had largely been caused by the growing world population coupled with increasing spending power in several developing regions, he said.
Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel told a separate press conference that poor harvests, rising spending power and growing financial investment in commodities was a major reason for rising food prices but not biofuel output.
Financial speculators had pushed up commodity prices dramatically and such speculators were "the real locusts" pushing up food prices in the Third World, Gabriel said.
Seehofer said the United Nations' World Food Organisation (FAO) estimated that only two percent of global farmland was used for biofuel crops.
He said he believed Germany could only reach its target of 20 percent renewable energy consumption by 2020 through the use of biofuels to meet 10 per cent of the goal.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel supported this target without reservation, Seehofer said.
Seehofer said a new German biofuels policy concept would be created before the summer at Merkel's request with Seehofer leading the coordination of ministries involved.
The food-verses-energy debate had failed to recognize that food prices were now falling in many sectors, Seehofer said.
"Milk prices are falling, pig prices have collapsed and grain prices are coming under pressure," he said.
Higher long-term food production was needed to counter high global prices, he said.
Germany would press the European Union to permanently end its set-aside scheme under which arable farmers must leave ten percent of their land fallow.
Set-aside was originally aimed to cut EU subsidies and EU food mountains. It has been temporarily suspended for the coming summer 2008 harvest to help counter high EU grains prices.
(Reporting by Michael Hogan; Editing by David Evans)
