LONDON (Dow Jones)--European Union Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said it would be better to miss the E.U.'s biofuel targets than risk social or environmental damage, according to a report on the British Broadcasting Corporation's Web site Monday.
"We have seen that the environmental problems caused by biofuels and also the social problems are bigger than we thought they were. So we have to move very carefully," Dimas told BBC.
The remarks come ahead of the Commission's target to publish biofuel legislation on Jan. 23.
Last year, the E.U. President's Council agreed on a 10% biofuel usage target in transport fuels by 2020.
Still, Dimas also told the BBC that because there are benefits from using biofuels, standards needs to be put into place for social and environmental sustainability.
On Monday, the Royal Society in the U.K. also warned biofuels could fail to deliver significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions unless government policies are correctly implemented.
Still the Royal Society also recommended that the U.K.'s Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation, which begins in April, be extended for 20 years in order stimulate long term investment.
"In designing policies and incentives to encourage investment in and the use of biofuels it is important to remember that one biofuel is not the same as another," said John Pickett chair of the Royal Society biofuels study.
"The greenhouse gas savings of each depends on how crops are grown and converted and how the fuel is used," he added.