The European Union has agreed rough deals on promoting renewable energy, but talks remain deadlocked over the controversial issue of biofuels, the European Parliament's lead negotiator said.
"Nearly 100 pages of the report are done and three pages are not done, but those three pages are the most politically difficult," Luxembourg Green group member Claude Turmes told Reuters late on Thursday.

The Arctic offers new energy and fishing resources as a result of global warming and new technology, the European Union said on Thursday.

Melting ice also presented new navigation possibilities such as a short route to the Pacific Ocean, the EU executive said.

The German government wants extensive exemptions for energy intensive industrial sectors for their carbon emissions caps from 2013, Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief spokesman said on Friday.

EU sets target for non-food biofuel The European Parliament recently voted to limit the use of food crops as biofuel. It proposed that at least 4 per cent of the total biofuel used in vehicular transport should come from non-food crops, dubbed second generation biofuels. It can also come from biomass, green electricity and hydrogen produced from renewables. Green campaigners have

nuclear energy Private players? Private players may soon be allowed entry into nuclear energy production. Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said as much minutes before he went in to deliberate on the draft Integrated Energy Policy with the plan panel. The law will, however, have to be amended to allow the private sector to set up nuclear plants, he added.