Other than niche applications the futility of biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel will become apparent when the various kinds of subsidies run out. Then I think there will be conflict over using natural gas both as a transport fuel and to generate electricity. It is becoming clearer in most countries that large scale wind power needs major natural gas backup that will be increasingly expensive. That will flow on to farming costs so the food vs. fuel conflict may continue even when biofuels are out of favour.

Strangely crude oil is now half the price ($72 compared to $147) of mid 2008 when combined oil, ethanol etc may have peaked. That may mean there is an inadequate price signal to find enough oil replacements when they are most needed. I doubt that ideas like electric tractors will be of much use in the wheatfields. At the moment we could be in the calm before the storm with major problems emerging perhaps in the next five years.

Without any pretence at being an “instant expert”, I accept that the report of Aleklett’s team did take time to write.

I also accept that that would be in marked contrast to the slick, ill-considered, conclusion to his article where he shoots the messenger: “Those that call for zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 must first explain how an estimated 9 billion people will be fed.”

That we are probably on-track for extreme problems arising from excess carbon dioxide emissions is a very relevant message. His concluding remarks give the impression that this is one that Aleklett does not want to hear. There is another message which seems unpalatable to him In the absence of its mention: the rise towards 9 billion is being boosted by overly-influential groups who have long been denying women the right to adequate education and access to the ability to limit their fertility so that every child is a wanted child with adequate fostering in its community. Should such influence persist, how many more than 9 billion need be considered?

How many, and at what life-styles? Interesting to compare the physicists take on the issue, which has been well canvassed from an ecologist’s point of view by Duncan Brown in FEED OR FEEDBACK (2003), and by Barney Foran and Franzi Poldi in the CSIRO publication Future Dilemmas (2002), prior to the burgeoning alerts on Climate Change and Peak Oil.

Peak Oil/Hydrocarbon - it will be/ has been reached without enabling adequate nutrition for even half of the present 6.7 billion. That the situation could have been improved by fine tuning of waste, distribution, agricultural expertise, transport efficiencies etc. is no guarantee that such action would have been sufficient to deliver for all at present numbers. Much agricultural production has been gained by mining fertile soil rather than from being in harmony with it. Boosted by access to fossil hydrocarbons, we have reached peak soil as well as peak oil – and are close-approaching peak humans. May that latter event be reached in as benign a way as possible.

All good, as far as it goes, & Taswegian is right about the true costs of Bio fuel.

One thing has been missed however. Most of the by-products are not available for fuel production, long term, if we want to continue in agricultural production. They are needed by the soil, & MUST go back, to keep that soil productive.

Much of Oz grain cropping country was becoming less productive, until farming methods were changed, to allow residues to remain in the paddock. Other changes, like zero till were made at the same time, & all these changes are required to enable a return to healthy soil structure.

Collinset I took something different from the comment "Those that call for zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 must first explain how an estimated 9 billion people will be fed.” then you did.
I did not see it as a denial of the need to address CO2 but rather as a warning that the solution is more complex than it may seem at first glance. The Rocky Mountain Institute has just produced a video promoting its project to address both food shortage and zero CO2. (http://www.rmi.org/rmi/reinventingfire)
We also need to take care not to blame the victims. World population growth, the degradation of land, the over exploitation of fossil water is a product of ill considered government policies; it is those policies which need to be addressed both at a local level and a global level.

Colinsett........You beat me to it. I was going to say exactly the same thing ,albeit in a less articulate way

"Those that call for zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 must first explain how an estimated 9 billion people will be fed."

For the last 50 years, ever since I was persuaded by Dr Paul R. Ehrlich that there were too many people on this planet, I have suggested to anyone who would listen that most of our problems are over population

The article by Kjell and his students is interesting because they appear to have missed a large body of work on this topic published in a number of journals. For example Biomass & Bioenergy has published on this topic over several years and a recent volume (Volume 34, 2) published in February 2010 is entirely devoted to “a roadmap for biofuels”.

It is widely recognised that first generation biofuels such as canola oil, palm oil and ethanol from grain are the cheapest source or liquid biofuels, but they are also the least effective at reducing CO2 emissions. In some cases it takes as much energy from fossil sources to produce the fuel as the fuel itself contains. Effectively these crops are just converting fossil coal, oil and gas into plant oils or ethanol, joule for joule. (Curious that Kjell seems to ignore coal, or perhaps I missed it. Or perhaps his real concern is the horror of peak oil.)

The future of liquid biofuels is in the second generation fuels, derived from cellulosic materials that we cannot eat. Agricultural wastes, forestry wastes and bioenergy crops such as switch grass, short rotation willow, SR poplar and SR eucalypts can be converted to various forms of liquid fuel and oil, but at a higher cost than the first generation fuels. The IAE estimates about 25% of total world energy demand could be met from cellulosic biomass without impacting significantly upon food production. The second gen fuels also produce a much greater yield of energy per unit of energy input, so they can reduce CO2 emissions significantly. There is a large body of literature, so if you really want to be informed, look more widely than the single article featured here.

For just one example of the most sophisticated technologies, google “Choren”. The end is not nigh, we just have to be clever about how we negotiate the transition from oil to other fuels.