EU seeks varied suppliers to meet biofuel targets

By Jeremy Smith

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Europe will have to rely on a wide variety of countries, starting with Brazil and Indonesia, if it wants to meet ambitious targets for raising the share of biofuels used in transport, the EU executive said on Tuesday.

With its proposed goal of including 10 percent biofuels within vehicle fuels by 2020, the European Commission recognizes that more imports, both of processed biofuel products and raw materials, will be needed to complement domestic supplies.

"While we can increase (production) domestically within Europe, we are also going to have to rely to a certain extent on imports to fulfill our 10 percent targets," EU Commission agriculture spokesman Michael Mann said.

"It will be a combination of imports from countries like Brazil and Indonesia, and domestic production," Mann said, speaking at the Reuters Global Biofuel Summit.

Brazil, the world's leading supplier of bioethanol produced from sugar cane, would be an obvious candidate to increase its exports to EU markets. For biodiesel, made mainly from vegetable oils, Indonesia was likely to be a prime supplier of palm oil.

The dangers of higher import needs from raising biofuel targets -- the Commission's proposals must also win approval from EU ministers -- included becoming too dependent on a single supplier and wreaking environmental damage in other countries.

To avoid this, the EU would have to use a diversity of import sources that could guarantee the environmental sustainability of products they supplied to Europe, Mann said.

DIVERSITY  Continued...