The European Union (EU) has announced on October 17 that the amount of biofuels that will be required to make up the transportation energy mix by 2020 has been halved from 10 per cent to 5 per cent.

The rollback mostly affects first-generation biofuels, which are produced from food crops such as corn, sugarcane, and potato. The new policy is in place to mitigate the backfiring of switching from less-clean fossil fuels to first-generation biofuels. A study conducted in 2009-2012 by the EU found that greenhouse gas emissions were on the rise because of conversion of agricultural land for planting first-generation biofuel crops. It also became known that large quantities of carbon stock had been released into the atmosphere because of forest clearance and peatland-draining.