A quote from Der Spiegel, 23 January 2008

The European Union has announced plans to increase the use of gas and diesel produced from plants. But the critique against biofuels is mounting. Many say they are even more harmful than conventional fossil fuels. […]

The evidence against biofuels marshalled by [Dr. Andrew] Boswell and other environmentalists appears quite damning. Advertised as a fuel that only emits the amount of carbon dioxide that the plants absorb while growing – making it carbon neutral – it actually has resulted in a profitable industrial sector attractive to countries around the world. Vast swaths of forest have been felled and burned in Argentina and elsewhere for soya plantations. Carbon-rich peat bogs are being drained and rain forests destroyed in Indonesia to make way for extensive palm oil farming.

Because the forests are often torched and the peat rapidly oxidizes, the result is huge amounts of CO2 being released into the atmosphere. Furthermore, healthy peat bogs and forests absorb CO2 – scientists refer to them as "carbon sinks" – making their disappearance doubly harmful. […]

Environmentalists say that emissions aren't the only serious problem created by the biofuel boom. Even crops grown in northern countries, like corn in the United States or rapeseed in Germany and the rest of Europe, harbor major dangers to the climate. Both maize and rapeseed are voracious consumers of nitrogen, leading farmers to use large quantities of nitrous oxide fertilizers. But when nitrous oxide is released into the atmosphere, it reflects 300 times as much heat as carbon dioxide does. […]

Another issue receiving increasing attention recently is that of rising food prices as foodstuffs are turned into fuel. Price increases for soybeans and corn hit developing countries particularly hard. […]

Slowly, it appears that some governments are beginning to listen to the chorus of criticisms. Last autumn, the Canadian province of Quebec announced that it would cease building plants to produce the biofuel ethanol. And on Monday, the UK's House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee called for a stop in the increase of biofuel use. "Biofuels can reduce greenhouse gas emissions from road transport. But at present, most biofuels have a detrimental impact on the environment overall," committee chairman Tim Yeo said, according to Reuters.

The European Union has reacted with anger to the UK report. Andris Piebalgs, European commissioner for energy, told the Guardian that "the Commission strongly disagrees with the conclusion of the British House of Commons report."

 
A quote from EUobserver, 24 January 2008

Corporate Europe Observatory, (CEO) a lobby watchdog group based in the Netherlands, is worried that the [European Commission] is taking into account the interests of the biofuel industry and ignoring the warnings of scientists, noting that the EU Joint Research Centre and the UK Parliament Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) have expressed strong doubts about biofuel sustainability, with the EAC calling for a moratorium on biofuel targets. […]

"Most biofuels now appear to be worse for the climate than oil," said Friends of the Earth Europe's Sonja Meister. "There is not enough good agriculture land to grow food, feed and biofuels. The JRC report said any expansion in Europe would mean ploughing grasslands, which will result in huge greenhouse gas emissions," she added.