I wonder if the slow progress of biofuel expansion is due to the hangup with liquids when perhaps gas is the way to go. We know that conventional biodiesel and ethanol cannot possibly replace current levels of petro-fuel usage. My feeling is that if algae based fuel was a goer it would have progressed further by now. I also wonder if Gunns Ltd have considered Fischer-Tropsch biomass-to-liquids as an alternative to paper pulp from woodchips, perhaps leaving out old growth forests as a wood source. The leader here seems to be Choren Industries jointly owned by Shell and VW.

However in Europe and Scandinavia buses and trains run on fermentation biomethane (sewer gas) though that is now in short supply. Methane can also be made from garbage or any biowaste via gasification followed by catalytic conversion. While the net energy is low the mainly-methane syngas can be blended with natural gas, biomethane and coal seam gas. Therefore I suggest the future of biofuel is a kind of compressed universal gas mainly consisting of methane.

ATSE and Robin Batterham should be commended for making such a reasoned contribution to the energy debate. I share their concerns for the Net Energy Alalysis/EROI of Gen1 biofuels. For more on that matter, I refer readers to my Opinion Online article of 27 November.

Biofuels are not sustainable where wastes (containing e.g. phosphorous that is becoming limited in supply) are not recycled back to the land (or growth medium) after energy extraction. For this reason harvesting biomass from "marginal" land without fertilizer inputs is not sustainable in the longer term. Biogas and algal farming (with recycling) may be viable but we had better get a hurry on since the world appears to be rapidly approaching the 5:1 EROEI energy cliff below which life as we know it may be unsustainable:
http://eroi.theoildrum.com/node/4762

For our future transport fuels and greenhouse gas abatement we must make second generation biofuels a reality or at least give it our best shot.
The suggestion put forward in this article is a step in the right direction.

However there is a closely related issue of immediate concern. The NSW Government is this minute looking at mandating an E10 in NSW which will have to be filled by the conversion of grain to ethanol at a cost to the Federal taxpayer of about $230 million per year.
Under current policy the Federal Government is facilitating the establishment of this first generation grain ethanol industry.

If allowed to proceed, an unstainable, uneconomic grain ethanol industry will soak up subsidies which could be put toward second generation biofuel research and development.

There are advocates of grain ethanol in government who would have us believe that waste feedstock is available to produce this quantity of ethanol without impacting food production.Tony Kelly MLC tells us that 'ethanol is a byproduct from the manufacture of distillers grain'.With 70 percent of the grain used for much higher valued ethanol this is spin at its worse. The Queensland Government suggests that the sorghum to be used to produce ethanol at Dalby is 'just cattle feed', not realising that the other food crops could have been grown instead of the sorghum.

These people are redefining waste feedstock for the production of first generation ethanol, either deliberately or through ignorance, in order to divorce a grain ethanol industry from it's impact on food production.

If they are successful in hoodwinking our policy makers we will find ourselves with a heavily subsidised, uneconomic, unsustainable grain ethanol industry with unreliable feedstock supply.
Such an industry will be an anchor on our efforts to bring second generation biofuels on line

geoff,

"The Queensland Government suggests that the sorghum to be used to produce ethanol at Dalby is 'just cattle feed', not realising that the other food crops could have been grown instead of the sorghum."

If the other crops are equally or more profitable, then yes, other crops will be grown. But what are they, and why aren't they already being grown? Grain prices have collapsed to levels verging on loss making, half the value they were last year, and yet you wish to perpetuate these low levels?
The greatest threat to ongoing food production is low prices, prices that curb investment in growing crops, R&D spending, fertiliser etc. Surely you must be aware US corn exports actually increased despite the ethanol boom. Decent prices - more production. And overseas customers were still buying.
http://www.allaboutfeed.net/news/id102-33208/us_corn_exports_to_hit_a_new_record.html

Now I realise that Australia is in no immediate danger of running short of food and that our cheap grains are exported in bulk for others benefit, but somewhere along the line Australia must get a share. Either in direct jobs from profitable farming, biofuel industries or heaven forbid the farmer him/herself.
Our terms of trade cannot be helped selling cheap grain at little more than cost and then importing oil - money going to already wealthy oil producers. At a time when jobs and home grown industry are sorely needed.

$230 Million in subsidies? I suspect most of that is forgone excise, being phased out starting 2011. Not really taxpayers money being handed out, but it is an investment that will bring in future excise, without exporting our wealth to oil rich nations.
Incidently why is govt "subsidising" LPG through low excise and even paying for car conversions, and subsidising new factory LPG car purchases. A conversion scheme alone reportedly worth over $500 million alone.
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23631872-5001021,00.html

"Australia’s large reserves of petroleum gas also make a case for the conversion subsidy as a stabilising measure, enhancing national security by reducing dependence on foreign oil supplies"
http://www.carcentral.com.au/200807182277/government/lpg-protected-from-upcoming-emissions-trading-scheme-price-hikes.html

Why not equal enthusiam for biofuels and farmers as for further fossil fuel burning by the LPG industry.

*The greatest threat to ongoing food production is low prices,*

Ah, smart man Rojo, you understand agriculture, many don't.

Farmers are not going to take the risks of growing crops, if
expected to grow them at a loss. Mining the soil to grow them,
is not sustainable either. Farmers need to be able to replace
nutrients removed and that costs money for fertilisers etc.

If Geoff and others want more cheap food for the world's poor,
they are free to use taxpayers dollars to buy that food for the poor.

The very reason that there was a wheat shortage last year, was
not because we could not have grown more wheat, but because of
low prices the year before, which hardly made it worth bothering
to grow the stuff. Next of course we had a shortage.

Dear Prof. Batterham and all forum readers
Oil is not a ‘fossil fuel’ but is a natural product of planet earth – the high-temperature, high-pressure continuous reaction between calcium carbonate and iron oxide – two of the most abundant compounds making up the earth’s crust – and water in the form of superheated steam. Russian and Ukrainian scientists found that a continuous reaction occurs naturally at a depth of approximately 100 km at a pressure of approximately 50,000 atmospheres (5 GPa) and a temperature of approximately 1500°C, and will continue more or less until the ‘death’ of planet earth in millions of years’ time. The high pressure causes oil to continuously seep up along fissures in the earth’s crust into subterranean caverns, which we call oil fields. Oil is still being produced naturally in great abundance, and is a sustainable resource – by the same definition that makes geothermal energy a sustainable resource. With this knowledge, Russian and Ukrainian scientists developed geotechnical science to better predict where to drill for oil. This explains why Russia is today one of the world's major oil and gas producers and exporters.
A team consisting of Russian scientists and Dr J. F. Kenney, of Gas Resources Corporation, Houston, USA, have actually built a reactor vessel and used it to provide physical proof that oil is produced from calcium carbonate, iron oxide and superheated steam. Further, they wrote a paper which was published in 2002 in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), where they also provided the theoretical analysis that proves that for the alkanes comprising petroleum, except for methane, to be formed from biological matter (i.e. for oil to be a fossil fuel) would be in contravention of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The URL for this paper is www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/99/17/10976
It is therefore highly likely that Australia has plenty of oil and will have for thousands of years.