EU to cap food-based biofuel use

The European Commission (EC) has started work on a draft proposal to cut the use of biofuels derived from food crops to no more than 5% of the transport fuel needs of member states. Under the European Union’s (EU) climate change targets, member states need to cover 10% of their transportation fuel consumption with biofuels by 2020, so the cap means that half of that percentage will have to come from non-food derived biofuels.
The move came after international aid agency Oxfam warned that increased green fuel demand from Europe was causing hunger in poor countries by driving up food prices and forcing people off their land. Oxfam calculates that land used to produce biofuels for the EU in 2008 could have produced enough wheat and maize to feed 127 million people.