E.U. Tries to Head Off Future Natural-Gas Shortages
By JAMES KANTER
Published: March 4, 2010

   
BRUSSELS — The European Commission sought Thursday to keep all its options open to avoid future crises over supplies of natural gas, as new evidence emerged that another of its main energy goals — encouraging biofuels — might need to be revised. 

Environmental groups and some E.U. officials are seeking to scale back a goal, agreed upon by E.U. governments at the end of 2008, that 10 percent of road fuels should come from renewable and low-carbon sources by the end of the next decade. One of the models examined by commission officials shows that E.U. targets for using biofuels could destabilize crop prices, leading to food shortages.

“The simulated effects of E.U. biofuels policies imply a considerable shock to agricultural commodity markets, but precise magnitudes need to be treated with some caution,” according to one of the draft reports prepared for agricultural officials.

Europe’s biofuels targets would create “strong incentives” for land that was previously not used for agriculture to be cleared and switched to agricultural use, according to the report.

That process “reduced the carbon-storage role played by the land that is switched, resulting in a loss of sequestered carbon that will take many years” to cancel out by the use of bioenergy, the report found."