The nascent biofuels industry that dawned in the aftermath of massive meltdowns of polar icecaps and Himalayan glaciers, rising sea levels, tsunamis and unprecedented droughts in some regions with attendant floods in others, has already witnessed much tumult in its short history of under a decade. At the core of it all is global warming. Triggered by ceaseless burning of fossil fuels and the resultant increase in atmospheric pollution, the issue simply refuses to be wished away. The impetus to address the burning issues arising from global warming and to arrest its alarming trends has spawned an agenda ranging from conservation to containment, with sustainability thrown in as the central dogma. The EU's headstart with mandates of progressively increasing blends of biofuels to contain fossil fuel emissions has notched up the first casualty in this saga, thanks to a chorus raised by environmental groups that aver that biofuel production could emit even more greenhouse gases, thus proving counterproductive. In a related development, recently the environment minister of Germany, Sigmar Gabriel declared that his country would scrap plans to develop auto biofuels because they were not appropriate for millions of vehicles that were already on the road. Dropping the E10 project (the proposed mandatory target for 10% of all transport fuels to be made from biofuels by year 2020) means that other sectors such as electricity production will have to pick up the slack by increasing their share of production from renewable sources. Simultaneously, the car industry will also have to come up with other technical measures to meet EU auto emission targets of an average 120 gm per km. The European Commission has now proposed that carbon dioxide emissions from the use of biofuels must be at least 35% lower than from the fossil fuels they are substituting after accounting the full pathway of biofuels-their production through transportation and use. However, a biofuels task group set up by EU governments has concluded that the 35% benchmark is not high enough. It now appears that a consensus may emerge to progressively ratchet the benchmark level to somewhere between 40 and 60%. Quite typically, the British government, which has been slow off the block, promulgated the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation that is operational this month, requiring 2.5% of road fuels sold to bebiofuels. It will rise to 5% by 2011. The industry is in its infancy, but it has already spawned its own band of ruffians. This was recently exposed in a trading scam which witnessed traders taking unabashed advantage of US agricultural subsidies. Under the "splash and dash" scam, European traders shipped biodiesel to the US, where a token drop of American fuel is added in order to claim 20 cents per litre subsidy for the whole shipment. It'd then be promptly shipped back to the EU and sold at lower prices, with local producers out priced! This unscrupulous practice strikes at the root of any emission savings from the use of the green fuel by the shipping emissions belched out by the return journey across the Atlantic. Biofuels are faltering in the face of soaring raw materials costs and a massive bioethanol and biodiesel overcapacity. Thanks to the confusion perpetrated in the EU and North America, output has outpaced consumption. With cereal and oilseed prices already 20-30% higher than a year ago, biofuel firms are bracing for a fall in profits. Politicians, ever alert to changing winds, are scrambling for straws by joining the chorus of environmentalists in sowing doubts about the ecological sustainability of green fuels. From my gleanings from extended discussions and debates on the sidelines of the World Biofuels Markets conclave two weeks ago at Brussels, there was little doubt that lavish use of cosmetics by major protagonists in the war against the malady we face will take some hard knocks before the scum settles and clarity surfaces.