While no decision was taken at this year's summit, Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, said: "We're not excluding the possibility that we'll have to amend or revise our goals."
The target of raising the share of biofuels in transport from current levels of 2% to 10% by 2020 was agreed this time last year by EU leaders themselves. It was initially considered a good means of incentivising governments and industry to invest in biofuels, in order to reduce Europe's dependency on imported oil and contribute to the fight against climate change.
Yet a plethora of studies and impact assessments produced by various sources in the past year have raised the alarm, namely that increasing biofuel production to these levels based on current technologies – which mainly involve transforming food and feed crops into fuels – could have more negative consequences for the environment than positive ones.
Among others, the concern is that the agricultural sector would be deprived of the arable land it needs to meet rising food demand at a time when global warming is already causing desertification in many areas.
What's more, many question biofuels' ability to deliver any significant greenhouse gas emission cuts compared to conventional fuels (see EurActiv 18/01/08; 11/12/07; 11/09/07; 27/07/07).
The announcement that the 10% target could be revised is a clear sign that member states are starting to take these warnings seriously.
