The EU took an early lead in promoting and utilizing biofuels to meet part of its transportation needs, hoping that biofuels would account for 10% of these needs by 2020. Now,after 18 months, studies have shown that the current generation of biofuels, derived from food crops including corn, soybeans and canola, have resulted in several negative consequences, including higher food prices, increasing deforestation, and, lowest blow of all, might be worse for the climate than gas and oil, once the expense of production and transportation are calculated.

The real problem is not that these particular biofuels have not worked out. The real problem is that the failure of these fuel sources to offer at least part of the solution gives the environmental hecklers and energy flat-earth types the excuse to dismiss and even stop the entire alternative fuel effort.

From The New York Times: European officials proposed scaling back drastically on their goal of increasing Europe’s use of biofuels, a major about-face on a central environmentaland energy issue.

Europe’s reversalon biofuels had gained significant momentum in recent days. Over the weekend, energy ministers gave one of their strongest signs that E.U. governments were prepared to back away from the 10 percent target. "We have to decide ifthe quota can be kept," the Jochen Homann, a state secretary in the ministry of economics, said Saturday in Paris. "It might be changed."

Britain, one ofthe biggest proponents of increased biofuel use, signaled a new course Monday.Ruth Kelly, the British transport minister, said the introduction of biofuels should be slowed down, citing a newly released report warning that current goals for biofuel production could cause a global rise in greenhouse gas emissions and an increase in poverty in the poorest countries.

“Given uncertainty and potential concerns, the government will adopt a more cautious approach until the evidence is clearer on environmental and social effects of biofuels,”Ms. Kelly told the British Parliament.

The Environment Committee of the European Parliament voted Monday to approve the measure and send it to the full Parliament. Members of each major political bloc on the committee called for a much lower target — 4 percent — and said the measures should be reviewed in 2015 before any decision to ratchet up that target to between 8 percent and 10 percent.

Although the environment committee’s vote is not binding, it will add to pressure on the European Commission to issue a revised proposal, said Mr. Delgado,the Breugel expert.

Under the alternative proposals that the committee voted on, 20 percent of renewable transport fuels would have to come from feed stocks, like algae, that do not compete with food for crop land. Europe also could meet the target by expanding the use of vehicles powered by biogas, electricity or hydrogen by 2015. That figure would rise to as much as 50 percent by 2020. Nations also would have to abide by rules on environmental and social sustainability.

The changes threaten the European Commission’s attempt to influence the creation of global standards to tackle climate-changing emissions. The fading luster of biofuels also threatens its goal of generating 20 percent of energy from renewable sources by 2020, up from 8.5 percent now.

Those who somehow continue to dispute that climate change concerns are real and must be dealt with, that the science is inconclusive, that the environment is just a political issue being hyped to destroy capitalism, will surely seize on this as proof that we should forget all this nonsense and go back to business as usual.The truth is that change is always hard, whether shifting from water to coal power, or coal to oil, or oil to an alternative future, and that difficulty must be not allowed to deter us from forging a new path, both to protect our environment and our security, and lay the groundwork for a more prosperous and safer community, here at home and around the world. We will continue to have fits and starts, we will fail and go off-course, but in the end, forward is the only way possible.