One of the most fascinating panels at BIO 2007 was "Energy Crops for Biofuels," a freewheeling discussion of how fuel can be produced from genetically modified plants and the policies needed to make it happen.
To really do the topic justice I need to transcribe my recordings and find some of the research mentioned, but in the meantime I'd like to post a few of the points that stuck with me:
1. Corn ethanol isn't inherently bad, but it's limited. The US will never be able to meet its stated biofuel targets -- 30 percent of domestic fuel consumption by 2030 -- with corn alone.
2. The rising demand for corn-based biofuels has created a "gold rush" mentality in which poor decisions are made and consequences -- such as the rising price of food corn, and the subsequent economic disruption -- are unnecessarily unforeseen.
3. By plunging blindly ahead, there's a risk of a backlash -- one which doesn't distinguish between corn-based and other crop-based biofuels.
4. A basic model for evaluating different biofuel crops and technologies needs to be developed. Without that, it's hard to know what works best, and we risk getting caught up in sweeping arguments -- corn or cellulose? Ethanol or biodiesel? -- rather than evaluating each fuel on a case-by-case basis.
5. Converting food crops to energy crops must be done carefully. It might not seem like a big deal to turn an acre of Kansas corn into fuel rather than breakfast cereal -- but that acre then needs to be planted somewhere else. That somewhere else might be an acre of rain forest, and the CO2 those trees would have absorbed will stay in the air. Such effects are part of the big equation.
Previous Wired coverage of non-corn biofuels here and here.
Image: Detail from Biomass as Feedstock for Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry: The Technical Feasibility of a Billion-Ton Annual Supply
