renewable energy

Europe can continue burning food to fuel cars and trucks in the EU, the European Parliament voted today. In the vote on the reform of the Renewable Energy Directive for 2030, MEPs supported rules that would allow member states to force-feed car drivers with biofuels made from food-crops at current levels until 2030.

A proposal by the European Parliament’s industry committee on the use of biofuels risks increasing emissions in transport, pushing up global food prices and negatively impacting people around the world who live from the land, Oxfam and green NGO Transport & Environment warn.

The new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) will be a major new funder of infrastructure in developing Asia. This report sets out a vision for an AIIB partnership with the region’s most climate-vulnerable countries that could forge a new path of economic development.

People around the world are trapped in a ‘toxic triangle’ made up of short-term financial investors, timid governments and fossil fuel companies, which threatens to push up  global temperatures, putting 400 million people at risk of hunger and drought by 2060. 

In reaction to the orientations discussed today by Energy Ministers on changes to the European biofuels policy, Marc Olivier Herman, Oxfam’s EU Policy Advisor said: