While there remains much research to be carried out, biofuels can, and will, contribute to the world’s energy mix for the foreseeable future. This was the clear message from the biofuel’s thread at this week’s BioVision 2007 (March 11 – 14, 2007) conference in Lyon, France. This is the 5th edition of BioVision and it brought together leading international experts on health, nutrition and environment issues to discuss, debate and agree actions for change.

“As far as a transport fuel is concerned fossil fuels will remain as the predominat fuel for the next 30 to 50 years,” said Jack Huttner, Vice President Biorefinery Business Development at Genencor, “but it is clear that the use of biofuels will grow in proportion.”

Interestingly, much of the debate during the session focused on the fundamentally different segments in the biofuel’s market. It is easy to think of biofuels as a liquid replacement for petrol or diesel, however, it is substantially more flexible than that. There were, said the panel, significant efficiencies to be gained from using biofuels in stationary power applications.

“The tendency,” said Chritian Patermann, Director of Biotechnologioes and Agribusiness for the European Commission, “is for biomass to be thought of as exclusively for liquid fuels, but we need to think more openly than that. There is a real opportunity to develop the use of biomass as a local fuel resource throughout the world. To think global, but act local.”

Lean Aahlby, Greenpeace’s Issues Director agreed. Overall she said we need to reduce our use of fuels and energy. There is a huge amount of work to be done on both the saving energy and becoming more energy efficient. She pointed to the recent Greenpeace report “Energy [r]evolution” which provides a blueprint of how to apply existing technologies to halve global CO2 emissions by 2050, whilst allowing for an increase in energy consumption.

“In the end Greenpeace is pragmatic and is looking for a workable solution,” said Aahlby. Biofuels will be a part of that mix.

In closing the panel agreed that there was still a real need for positive action across the board to support the development of biofuels in the future. If this was to be successful then it would have to be a joint effort with industry, politicians and academics all playing their part. It needed a positive framework, and it would have to be ready to face some failures. Nevertheless, biofuels were going to be a small but significant part of the world’s future energy mix.