Over the past few years, the world has had a turbulent, love-hate relationship with biofuels, so much so that there is confusion in most people’s mind as to whether they are good, neutral, or bad. Here we talk of the basics of biofuels, so that you can form your own opinion on this matter.

Biofuels are important to the world today due to a variety of reasons. First of all, to a world worried about energy security, they offer a strategic alternate to oil imports. Second, they allow an element of de-linking from volatile crude oil prices and enable energy costs to remain under control. Lastly, with rapidly accelerating global warming, there is an urgent need for sources of “clean” energy that do not further compound the problem of global warming, and biofuels are potentially just such an energy source.

First Generation Biofuels are useful, but limited. There is a threshold above which they cannot produce enough biofuel without threatening food supplies and biodiversity. They are not cost competitive with existing fossil fuels such as oil, and some of them produce only limited greenhouse gas emissions savings. When taking emissions from production and transport into account, life-cycle emissions from first-generation biofuels frequently exceed those of traditional fossil fuels.

Second Generation Biofuels are sustainable – environmentally, socially as well as commercially. Therefore these biofuels will not drive up food prices, will not further degrade the atmosphere, and will not need subsidies to be economically viable.

The goal of second generation biofuel processes is to extend the amount of biofuel that can be produced sustainably by using biomass consisting of the residual non-food parts of current crops, such as stems, leaves and husks that are left behind once the food crop has been extracted, as well as other crops that are not used for food purposes (non food crops), such as switch grass, Jatropha, Pongamia etc and cereals that bear little grain, and also industry waste such as wood chips, skins and pulp from fruit pressing, etc.