MEPs vote to revise transport biofuels target
Fri 12 September 2008
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The European Parliament's Industry Committee has voted to amend the European Commission's target for renewable fuels to comprise 10% of all transport fuels by 2020. The Committee voted for a plan under which 40% of the biofuels target should come from alternatives to so-called 'first generation' biofuels.
The MEPs' vote will push EU governments to put less focus on first generation biofuels, which use food crops to make transport fuels, and instead use more alternative low carbon technologies such as electric and advanced biofuel technologies.
The EC's commitment that 10% of all road transport fuels should come from renewables emerged earlier this year as part of a wider plan, announced in 2007, to cut EU greenhouse gas emissions to 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020.
The Industry Committee claimed that alternatives to first generation biofuels could include electricity and hydrogen produced from renewable sources as well as so-called 'second generation' biofuels made from waste plant material, "ligno-cellulosic biomass", or vat-grown algae.
Environmental campaigners welcomed the vote but said that the decision does not go far enough and that targets should be scrapped altogether.
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