Food and Fuel - Anthony F. Michaels, Proteus Environmental Technologies

Frontiers of Biofuel Science

Anthony F. Michaels, Proteus Environmental Technologies

Biofuels are a broad category of energy feedstocks that are of recent biological origin and nominally renewable on time-scales that are relevant to the climate system and human impact on greenhouse gases. This generally means plants that we grow and harvest within a few years to a few decades - though some products like forests may span centuries. Recently, the expansion of biofuels has been associated with ethanol production from a variety of food crops with clear negative consequences for food supply, nutrient enrichment of surface waters and even unanticipated consequences for their impact on the production of fossil fuel greenhouse gases. The next generations of renewable biofuels shift away from food materials to non-food waste from those same plants or to novel crops that are specifically grown as fuels. Many are quite promising, but all face challenges where scientific and engineering advances are the critical step to commercial success. These advances range from technological and biological requirements for growing the feedstocks (e.g. algae and some dry-climate terrestrial plants) to the requirements for processing the materials into useful fuels. The introduction of novel energy crops into the agricultural and natural landscapes of both developed and developing countries provides important social and economic challenges and opportunities. Genetic engineering provides a powerful and controversial tool for some applications. However, the most important element for the success of all of these crops is that the price be cost-competitive with fossil fuels, including the technological transformations that may be necessary to use the new biofuel. Thus, the critical scientific advances are a combination of new, improved technologies with innovations to reduce costs. Ultimately, the success of some of these biofuels has the potential to dramatically transform the energy landscape and the time to reach these goals may be much shorter than many anticipate, and perhaps not a moment too soon.