Issues in Transport Biofuels Production: A Review of the Global Experience

In the last few years ethanol and biodiesel as energy source have been seen as a panacea because of their carbon neutrality and transport oil substitution abilities. The biofuels production got the world wide response and the governments in a large number of countries took policy initiatives to promote biofuels, fixed blending mandates and designed and implemented the economic incentives for production and commercialization of biofuels. The evaluation of global biofuels production in the last few years brings out that the biofuels production will sustain only if the production of biofuels feedstock fits well in the whole food and agro-ecological system, avoids the other numerous limiting conditions and becomes a long term cost effective proven source. There is no standard package of practices for the choice of feedstock but it will depend on the assessment of each micro agro-ecological situation. The production of selected feedstock on commercial scale may require substantial investment of time and money in research and development for plant varieties improvement and evolving the suitable production technology. In the absence of such approach, the biofuels production programs are likely to be engulfed in one issue or the other and may bring unforeseen externalities.