A major reason is that over the last 18 months, studies have shown that the current generation of biofuels — reliant on food crops like canola, corn and soybeans — helps drive up food prices by using agricultural land, as well as aggravating deforestation, and may be worse for the climate than conventional oil once the cost of production and transport are taken into account.  Most of the world’s biofuel is extracted from corn in the United States, sugar in Brazil, and both grain and oil-seed crops in Europe.  Europe’s reversal on 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 if the 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 of the 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 cropland. 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.  There is disagreement about the role in rising food prices, and some analysts say that the backlash against biofuels now is going too far.  The European Commission has denied that biofuels are helping push up food prices by displacing other agriculture and has vowed to stick by its 10 percent goal.  Michael Mann, a spokesman, said Monday that higher food prices had been caused by increased demand for meat and dairy products, particularly in China and India, two years of bad harvests around the world, speculation and by restrictions on exports of food commodities by some nations.  New Energy Finance, a research group in London, said in May that prices had risen 8 percent for grains and 17 percent for oils as a result of biofuels policies. It found effects on the price of sugars had been negligible.  Because of an editing error, an article on Tuesday about biofuels in the European Union misidentified the position held by a German official who commented on the likelihood that European governments would back away from targets for biofuel use. Jochen Homann is a state secretary in Germany’s economics ministry; he is not the country’s economics minister, a position held by Michael Glos.
European officials proposed scaling back drastically on their goal of increasing Europe’s use of biofuels, a major about-face on a central environmental and energy issue.