EU's biofuel targets questioned

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"We're not excluding the possibility that we'll have to amend or revise our goals," said Prime Minister Janez Jansa of Solvenia, which holds the rotating EU presidency. "We have to address these concerns by relevant analysis."

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union raised the possibility on Thursday it might reconsider strategy on biofuels over concerns the bloc's approach was pushing up food prices and doing more harm than good to the environment.

"We're not excluding the possibility that we'll have to amend or revise our goals," said Prime Minister Janez Jansa of Solvenia, which holds the rotating EU presidency. "We have to address these concerns by relevant analysis."

EU leaders pledged last year to boost the share of biofuels produced from crops for use in transport to 10 percent by 2020.

But some environmentalists and United Nations agencies say rising production of biofuels has helped drive up food prices, distorted government budgets and led to deforestation in southeast Asia and Brazil.

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Scientists also say some kinds of biofuels generate as much carbon dioxide (CO2) as the fossil fuels they replace.

"Quite certainly there will be more analysis," Jansa told reporters at the end of the first day of an EU summit. He said while a revision of targets could not be ruled out, he had not yet heard any arguments in favor of doing so.

The executive European Commission has sought to overcome objections by proposing strict "sustainability criteria" for biofuels marketed in the EU.

These would require a substantial CO2 saving and guarantees that biofuels did not come from forested areas. A working group of EU states is studying how to make such criteria watertight.

The Commission says that without a binding target, industry would have no incentive to produce biofuels.

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters: "Yes we should stick to the target, but we should look into cleaner second generation biofuels."

(Reporting by Pete Harrison, editing by Paul Taylor and Ralph Gowling )