EU reduces food-based biofuel production

BBC : Because of criticism about the direct and indirect effects of biofuels on the world’s poor, the European Union (EU) is taking steps to shift biofuel production from food crops to farm waste. “With close to 900 million people going hungry every day, we cannot continue diverting valuable food into fuel,” said Tracy Carty, a spokeswoman for the poverty action group Oxfam. In addition, environmentalists say that the machinery used to clear land to plant biofuel crops increases the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, and the cutting down of trees, which absorb CO ₂, reduces the carbon sink. In response, the EU is setting a cap on the amount of food-based biofuel produced; encouraging biofuel production from waste, straw, algae, and other nonfood sources; and placing limits on greenhouse gas emissions from new biofuel installations.