EU energy,climate chiefs confirm aim to limit food-based biofuel

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The EU energy and climate commissioners on Monday confirmed they planned to limit crop-based biofuels to 5 percent of total energy consumption and said they were not pushing for biofuels that would compete with food.

"It is wrong to believe that we are pushing food-based biofuels. In our upcoming proposal for new legislation, we do exactly the contrary: we limit them to the current consumption level, that is 5 percent up to 2020," Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard and Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said in a joint statement.

Reuters reported last week the European Union would impose a limit on the use of crop-based biofuels.

(Reporting by Barbara Lewis; editing by Rex Merrifield)