Biotechnology: essential when producing biofuel

12th November, 2007

The EU has set itself some goals: biofuels must account for 5.75% of all transport fuels by 2010 and 10% in 2020. However, in order to achieve these goals in a sustainable and competitive way, the available biomass in Europe needs to increase. Cultivating energy crops on set-aside and non-cultivated land will contribute, but this will not be sufficient to fulfill all the demand. It will also be critical to increase land productivity (more biomass output/ha) as well as crop quality, meaning more fermentable carbohydrates or higher oil content. This can be achieved via plant science using modern plant breeding techniques and biotechnology in combination with state-of-the-art application of crop protection.

Another important step to increase biofuel production will be the competitive production of biofuels from (hemi)cellulose and organic agricultural waste instead of from starch, sugar and oils. These are so-called second generation biofuels.

Again innovation in plant science and industrial biotechnology - especially (hemi)cellulose degrading enzymes with improved efficiency - will be crucial to obtain this.

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