Don’t Biofuels Merit Equal Priority with Renewable Energy?

[solarant]

Biofuels are a troubled territory. And they have been like that for the past few years. At the same time, they are such an incredibly important area, with the world having almost 1 billion vehicles depending on oil to run! Don't biofuels then deserve a huge amount of attention and priority even if they are going through troubled times right now?

As the [URL="http://eai.in/blog/2010/06/dont-biofuels-merit-equal-priority-in-india-with-renewable-energy.html"]following post from the EAI Blog[/URL] says, in large countries like India, biofuels simply are not getting the same kind of attention that solar and wind power are getting, even though India is a large importer of oil and there is a critical need for the country to be self reliant in oil: "Most power in India is produced by coal and hydroelectric power – both of which are available in plenty within India (yes, we import about 10% of our coal requirements, but we actually have reserves that will last us about 100 years at current levels of consumption). On the other hand, we have much less oil and import about 70% of our requirements (though it is nice to know that there have been some significant oil finds in the recent past by Cairn Energy and more recently by Reliance).

If our dependence on foreign countries is much higher for oil than for electricity, one would expect an equally high thrust to be provided by the government for the progress of biofuels as it is provided for renewable electricity. But I do not find an equal thrust. True, there are blending mandates and slightly increased buy-in rates for both ethanol and biodiesel, but nothing of the sort that is being provided to solar PV and thermal where the government plans to provide incentives that is almost 80% the total cost of production."

I am surprised why not just India, but many other countries in the world are not putting in huge research dollars into this? True, they talk a lot about it, but even the USA I understand puts in much more into solar than into biofuels. (Countries like Brazil, Malaysia and Indonesia are the only pleasant exceptions).

A billion vehicles is a heck of a lot. And believe me, it is going to take many decades, if at all, before the cars in their current IC engine design are going to be overtakes by electric cars. What do we do in the meantime. For all you know, oil might cost $150 plus within the next few years. I think biofuels is the only answer, even though there are many environmentalists who doubt the greenness of biofuels.

And for biofuels to become sustainable, it is a must for the governments to bear part of the R&D cost and efforts through significant subsidies and incentives.

True, the investments will take some time to bear fruit, but such is life. What do you think?