Biofuels need research, too

Science|Business Senior Editor Nuala Moran.

But their fall from grace must not be allowed to undermine research into sustainable, climate-friendly, second-generation biofuels generated from non-edible plant material, or non-food crops that grow where food crops will not.

A professor at Cambridge University recently confided that a colleague working in the field of such cellulosic biofuels had stopped telling casual enquirers what he does, such was the uncomprehending opprobrium he was attracting.

There are shades of the grinding row over genetically modified crops here. Europe’s rejection of first-generation products effectively killed off agricultural biotech. Now, in times of food shortages there is a creeping acknowledgement that GM may make a contribution to agricultural productivity.

But it is not possible to turn round and pick GM seeds off the shelf. The kinds of GM crops currently available are not, in the main, suited for Europe’s growing conditions, and developing ones that are will take time and the incentive of knowing there is a market.

Well, is it 5 or 90?

There are arguments about the extent to which biofuels are contributing to food price rises–with the US government putting it at under 5 per cent, while the World Bank, in a report leaked last week, puts the figure at over 90 per cent.

On Monday the UK government indicated it was backing down from its biofuels ambitions after an investigation it had commissioned showed there is a direct link between biofuel production and the rising price of food commodities.

Then the European Parliament in Strasbourg voted to lower the EU target of 10 per cent of transport fuel coming from renewable resources by 2015.

In the face of the current crisis over food supplies this is the right thing to do. The worry now is that biofuels are so undesirable that research into second-generation plant-based fuels will come to a halt.

Enter the algae

An even more enticing prospect than using non-edible plant material is the use of algae as feedstock for biofuels. The Cambridge professor who is worried about the standing of biofuel research works in this field. And scientists at the University of California in San Diego promoted their vision of algae-derived biofuels at the US Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) meeting held in the city last month.

They have developed a chemical process for extracting synthetic petrol from algae. This has several attractions. The fuel produced is compatible with petrol derived from crude oil, and thus could be pumped through existing supply networks; the extraction process involves a chemical reaction that does not require heat to initiate it; and the proposal is that the algae would be grown in infertile desert areas of California, where it would be irrigated with otherwise unusable saline water.

A company, Sapphire Energy – which has venture capital backing from the UK research charity, the Wellcome Trust – is now working to scale up this process. Meanwhile the scientists at the University of California are putting their efforts into using the same algae as a feedstock for plastics, replacing another critical use of non-renewable hydrocarbons.

It is an enticing vision.

Europe has taken a lead in promoting the use of biofuels, both to protect the climate and to conserve non-renewable energy sources. It is right to signal a retreat in the face of food price rises. But it must not be the case that research into new and better methods of producing biofuels is put on hold too.