Will the U.S. please stop pretending that any and all biofuels are some sort of golden panacea to our energy crisis? If only 20% of the U.S. fleet were supplied with corn or sugar biofuels, we would need to suck fuel from 260 million acres of arable land. Unsurprisingly, the World Bank has calculated that the recent first generation biofuel bonanza has been responsible for an average worldwide increase in food prices of 75%.

In response, Europe has been backpedalling on its original hasty demands for biofuels. Just last year, European governments set a goal for 10% of all transportation fuels to be supplied by biofuels. Last week, however, the Industry Commission of the European Parliament modified this demand to only 5% of all transportation fuels to coming from renewable sources by 2015, and of that, at least one-fifth must come from sources not interfering with food production.

Yet when Texas petitioned the EPA a few months ago to reduce their biofuel quotas, the EPA wouldn’t have any of it. No, Texas will produce some sort of biofuel and Texas will like it.

First generation biofuels - such as the corn and sugar used extensively in the U.S. - are productively inefficient, often result in increased greenhouse gas emissions (because of increased nitrous oxide releases), and heavily interfere with world food prices. But there is a whole new second generation of biofuels, including algae and cellulosic waste, which are being explored around the world in light of these first-generation biofuel criticisms. The EPA should be looking critically at environmental and economic research associated with first and second generation biofuels.

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