"BusinessEurope considers the current high food prices give additional weight to its call for the EU to reconsider the 10 percent target for biofuels in transport," BusinessEurope President Ernest-Antoine Seilliere said in a letter to EU president Slovenia and distributed to media on Wednesday.

EU leaders have agreed that renewable energy sources, such as ethanol, should make up 10 percent of road transport fuels by 2020 as part of the bloc's program to lower carbon dioxide emissions, blamed for global warming.

But the plan has come under fire from some scientists and politicians who say the growing production of biofuels is hurting food supply at a time of soaring prices which has led to protests and riots in some poor countries.

The critics say fuels derived from crops compete with food for farming land and help to push up food prices.

Some doubts about biofuels are emerging among the EU's 27 government with Italy become its first member state to question the 10 percent target this month.

Some other nations want to make the binding nature of the target conditional on strict standards.

These could include rules on the environmental and social impact of existing crop-based fuels and tying the target to the commercial availability of second-generation biofuels derived from plant waste, algae and other non-food materials.

Separately, the EU is investigating whether soaring imports of biodiesel from the United States are breaking global trade rules because of subsidies involved, raising the prospect of punitive import tariffs for the U.S. imports.

In its letter, BusinessEurope renewed pressure on EU leaders not to force energy-intensive companies to buy carbon dioxide emissions permits from 2013, rather than receive them for free as is the case now, unless there is a global deal on the issue.

European industries say they could lose out to competitors in countries that have less strict rules -- ranging from the United States to China -- without a global deal.

"We insist that energy-intensive industries exposed on an evidence basis to international competition must receive 100 percent free allocations ... until there is an international agreement with equivalent burdens for industry outside Europe," Seilliere wrote.

Source: Reuters

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