Biofuel boom could follow oil price spike

guardian.co.uk
Damian Carrington's Environment Blog

When biofuels match oil on price, production could boom in the developing countries that also have the greatest need to boost food supply

The production of biofuels, good thing or not, will be decided by the setting of targets in the big western energy markets, right? Wrong, said bio-energy expert Jeremy Woods, at Imperial College, when I spoke to him yesterday.

He thinks biofuel production could pass a tipping point and start to rocket as rising oil prices make the plant-derived fuel cheaper in many developing countries around the world.

"Once oil is over $70 a barrel, conventional and new generation biofuels become cost competitive, certainly with tar sands and shale, and with oil from much of the Middle East and Brazil's new offshore fields," he says. "When oil and biofuels are competitive, we are into a different world."

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