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Published online 13 February 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/451759a
Biofuels might create more emissions than they save
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NREL did a survey of U.S. biomass potential and found 157 million tons of Ag waste. That's enough to create enough ethanol to take U.S. gasoline to E08, not E85. That is nice, but hardly a solution. It would take a factor of 10 in efficiency to have that be enough ethanol. Plug-in vehicles have that potential, making ethanol a backup fuel of last resort.
Garbage and sewage are the best sources of renewable biomass. And both waste resources can be converted into methanol which can be further converted into high octane gasoline which can be immediately mixed in with current gasoline resources. So there's no logical reason to covert garbage into ethanol.
The conversion of phytoplankton to ethanol rather than corn or other terrestrial biomass would reduce the need for space by a large factor. We must encourage the governments to abandon subsidies for corn production and invest in phytoplankton biomass conversion. This would offer a fuel source that also does not compete with the food undustry and cause a need to ramp up GMO yield which makes the general people leary.
It seems that cultivation of such perennial crops (like Jatropha) should involve local people and can be sustained on a smaller scale, mainly for local consumption. If big industries are involved in such efforts, then it will create the same problems as in current corn or vegetable oil based biofuel industry. It is particularly important for developing countries where law and order implementation is poor and probability of coercing and/or enticing poor farmers to cultivate even fartile land for such crops is much higher.