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8th October 2007

The Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) and the European Bioethanol Fuel Association (eBIO) have called on the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to disavow a paper issued last month critical of world ethanol production. The paper, written by the Chair of the Round Table on Sustainable Development at the OECD, explicitly states that it does “not necessarily reflect the views of the OECD or the governments of its Member countries.” Yet, say the biofuels trade bodies, media reports have been portraying the paper as the official position of OECD.

Either way, adverse comment on the results and implications of using food crops for biofuel production have multiplied, before and since the OECD paper was published.

Meanwhile, Robert Vierhout, Secretary General of the European Bioethanol Fuel Association, told a conference last week that rising prices for feedstocks for first-generation biofuels such as wheat and palm oil were prompting biofuels producers to shelve planned plants and cut output at existing facilities. In Germany in particular, reduced tax incentives for biodiesel have reduced demand and Karl Giersberg, the CFO of EOP Biodiesel has suggested that up to half Germany’s current, under-used biodiesel capacity might disappear unless the regulatory environment improves in the next two years.

With rising concern about the environmental and food supply implications of the use of food crops for road fuel, fresh investment may be needed in second-generation cellulosic biofuel feedstocks and refining technologies. One option reported by Reuters’ Planet Ark service on 5 October is a grain-free sorghum variety developed by Ceres, Inc. and Texas A&M University, which grows to 20 ft , produces yields faster than switchgrass, and can be cultivated with less water and fertilizer than maize, to produce four times the ethanol yield per acre of maize; half the cost of a cellusic biofuel refinery is said to be in the harvesting and transport of the feedstock.

- The lead front page story in The Guardian of 6 October covers the first-ever manufacture by genome researcher Craig Venter and colleagues of an artificial chromosome. Venter speculates that designer genomes could lead to alternative energy sources including butane or propane made entirely from sugar, and articifical bacteria which could be deployed to mop up excess CO2,

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