It’s very hard for me to have a conversation about these issues, because people adopt incredibly defensive postures…The scientists on one side and civil-society organizations on the other. And, to be fair to those groups, science has often proceeded by skipping the dialogue. But some environmental groups will say, Let’s not permit any of this work to get out of a laboratory until we are sure it is all safe. And as a practical matter that is not the way science works. We can’t come back decades later with an answer. We need to develop solutions by doing them. The potential is great enough, I believe, to convince people it’s worth the risk.

That’s Drew Endy, assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford University, talking to Michael Specter in the current issue of The New Yorker about synthetic biology. This is more than just another example of great narrative science reporting from the magazine. It’s a showcase of candid, effective, values-based discussions about the social implications of an emerging technology.

Not only is Endy’s conscientious take on the promise and peril of synbio a perfect counter to anyone who claims that scientists don’t care about ethical boundaries; he also draws attention to a conversational impasse that prevents clear thinking on how to design useful regulatory policies.

Synbio is special among other emerging technologies like neuroscience and nanotechnology in that it already promises solutions to planet-scale problems in public health and energy. Specter opens the article with the story of how Jay Keasling at UC Berkeley built a breed of E. Coli bacteria that can manufacture artemisinin, a powerful treatment for drug-resistant malaria. Researchers are also hard at work designing organisms that can churn out biofuels at industrial scales. But the same open-source genetic components that build a life-saving bug could, in the wrong hands, build terrible pathogens.

As CAP Senior Fellow Andrew Light explained in a podcast on the ethics of emerging technologies, “The attitude is not to keep synbio from happening,” but rather to create and maintain public confidence in its benefits. Hearing clear, thoughtful messages from more scientists like Endy could go a long way to supporting that goal.

As Endy tells Specter, the reason many people recoil at the power to create synthetic life is “Because it’s scary as hell…It’s the coolest platform science has ever produced, but the questions it raises are the hardest to answer.”

Wherever you stand on this debate, it’s hard to deny that, as a whole, our national fervor for biofuels has cooled considerably over the past year-as has interest in the multitude of ethanol start-ups that sprung up to cash in on the craze, many of which now find themselves squeezed by the recession or, worse, bankrupt. What started as an attempt to make the country less reliant on foreign sources of fossil fuels in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks soon morphed into a mega-industry, buoyed by an administration and Congress eager to show off their “green” credentials.

Many congressmen saw it as a golden opportunity to bolster their electoral fortunes by pouring millions into politically influential agristates. In 2004, a young Democratic senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, praised corn ethanol as a vital component of our energy policy. “Instead of continuing to link our energy policy to foreign fields of oil, it should be linked to farm fields of corn,” he said during a Senate speech.

In the summer of 2005, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which required refiners to blend 7.5 billion gallons of biofuels into gasoline by 2012; European Union nations followed suit in short order, pledging to obtain 10 percent of their transport fuels from biofuels by 2010. At the peak of the boom, investors were pouring tens of millions into a range of flashy new ventures, each more ambitious than the last. The overwhelming critical, and popular, reception that greeted Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth only made the appeal of green, renewable forms of energy more irresistible.

Even as refiners were busily erecting new plants to ride the investment craze, some among the scientific and environmental community were already beginning to sound the alarms about biofuels’ risks. For one, many pointed out that corn ethanol’s vaunted prowess in reducing greenhouse gas emissions was erroneous; indeed, when the fuel costs of growing corn and producing ethanol are taken into account, corn ethanol’s carbon footprint is actually larger than that of gasoline. To make matters worse, ethanol production is a terribly inefficient process, and shifting more land to cornfield has many detrimental environmental impacts, including increased soil erosion, higher fertilizer and pesticide use, and higher water consumption.

At first, these findings did little to diminish the enthusiasm for biofuels. Aside from some moderate hand-wringing, politicians kept the subsidy taps flowing; most investors didn’t even skip a beat. It wasn’t until global wholesale food prices began their sharp rise in 2008, prompting widespread concerns about food availability and starvation (particularly in developing countries), that governments and investors faced a popular backlash.

Reports published by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization and other international agencies concluded that, at best, biofuels would only offset a moderate share of fossil fuel consumption over the next decade and that their costs-in terms of deforestation, resource use and displaced food production-often outstripped their purported benefits.

Scientists have also warned that the health and environmental costs could be significant. A study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that increased corn ethanol production would worsen the Gulf of Mexico “dead zone,” an area practically devoid of life that is the size of New Jersey. A more recent study published in the same journal found that the combined climate change and health costs associated with first generation ethanol production and combustion could greatly exceed those of gasoline if large tracts of agricultural land are displaced as a result-though, on the positive side, it did also find that cellulosic ethanol production from sustainable sources (prairie biomass, corn stover, or switchgrass) would drastically lower emission costs.

The primary objection raised against biofuel production is that it could cause widespread deforestation in tropical countries such as Indonesia, Brazil, and Malaysia. Holly Gibbs, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, cautioned at a recent scientific meeting that policies that favored biofuel crop production could worsen climate change by accelerating the destruction of rainforests. Brazil and Indonesia, which have two of the world’s most coveted first-generation biofuel crops (soybean and palm oil, respectively), have experienced a boom in production that has resulted in the conversion of large tracts of once lush rainforests into mono-crop farmlands. In Indonesia, palm oil production tripled during the 1990s and doubled again between 2000 and 2007.

According to Gibbs, the destruction of rainforests results in the release of more greenhouse gas emissions than are conserved through the use of current-generation biofuels, creating what is called a “carbon debt.” Because rainforests are some of the planet’s largest carbon reservoirs, storing over 340 billion tons in the aggregate, recouping the losses incurred by deforestation could take several centuries to millennia.

While doubts still abound about the future of biofuels, many scientists and environmentalists believe that an emphasis on sustainability can provide a viable path forward for biofuel production. An article co-authored by 23 scientists in the journal Science last year laid out several guiding principles for industry and legislators, advising them to consider both the environmental and politicoeconomic consequences of biofuel production and urging a rapid shift to cellulosic ethanol production.

Existing policies are inadequate, they warn, and risk altering the landscape of the planet for the worse if nothing changes. Embracing sustainability as a way of life need not mean banishing biofuels; it simply means revamping our current approach so that we recognize the national and international implications of our actions.

“Sustainable biofuel production systems could play a highly positive role in mitigating climate change, enhancing environmental quality, and strengthening the global economy, but it will take sound, science-based policy and additional research effort to make this so,” the authors conclude. In selecting Dr. Steven Chu, the former director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, to head up the Department of Energy, President Obama has given the sustainable biofuel movement a shot in the arm and made clear his intention to invest considerable resources into a robust renewable energy research agenda. By taking these recommendations to heart, Mr. Obama can begin to lay the groundwork for an enduring energy infrastructure that will far outlive his presidency.

Jeremy Jacquot is a graduate student in marine environmental biology at the University of Southern California and is a contributing writer for DeSmogBlog, Discover Magazine, and Popular Mechanics.

SOURCE: NREL

Prairie grass.

Writing at the Switchboard blog, Nathanael Greene is pleased with the conclusions of 23 scientists who co-authored the Policy Forum in Friday’s issue of Science, “Sustainable Biofuels Redux” (subscription). He quotes the clear line the authors take on feedstocks that compete with food supplies: “… [W]e know that grain-based biofuel cropping systems as currently managed cause environmental harm,” as well as their appreciation that current systems can get better: “[B]ecause grain-based ethanol will likely remain in the nation’s energy portfolio, it is important to understand that appropriate practices can soften its environmental impact.”

Greene quotes at length from the article’s conclusion and nods in agreement that strong policy action is necessary:

We cannot repeat enough the point that cellulosic biofuels can be good but only will be if we decide through our policies to require them to be good. Furthermore, we know enough to act now to position the industry in the right direction.

I think the GHG standards and sourcing safeguards in the RFS are major step in this direction, but I heartily agree with the authors that policies to promote broadly sustainable biofuels are not in place.

Last year’s energy bill updated the parameters of the Renewable Fuels Standard to stipulate that various categories of biofuels must meet certain greenhouse gas emissions reductions, and for most of this year, the Environmental Protection Agency has been at work the complex rule-making process for the legislation. We have more on the legislation and that process here and here.

But just today, the Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that tomorrow they will release a new plan for accelerating the development of the sustainable biofuels industry. The media advisory is short and does not address the RFS rulemaking, which of course is the purview of EPA, though the status of that process seems relevant.

The text of the release:

On Tuesday, October 7, 2008, Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Ed Schafer and Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Samuel W. Bodman will release the National Biofuels Action Plan, an interagency plan detailing the collaborative efforts to accelerate the development of a sustainable biofuels industry. The Cabinet Secretaries will announce additional news related to the biofuels industry, new biofuel technology and ethanol blending.

Gov. Perry submitted a request on April 25 for a waiver that would reduce the federally mandated volume of ethanol by half, from 9 billion gallons in 2008 to 4.5 billion gallons. The request argued that because the mandate drives up corn prices, it causes economic hardship to livestock producers by elevating animal feed costs and, according to the request letter, “driving up global food prices.”

But Johnson said during a 1 pm conference call today that “the RFS mandate is not causing severe economic harm,” nor is it damaging the environment, and therefore does not meet the statutory threshold that would warrant a waiver.

NREL

Corn is the primary feedstock for biofuels in the United States. Cellulosic feedstocks like switchgrass could produce sustainable biofuels with fewer lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions.

Rather, the administrator said, the Renewable Fuels Standard is strengthening America’s energy security and farming communities. In a press release statement, he called it “important tool in our ongoing efforts to reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions and lessen our dependence on foreign oil.”

Since opening the request to public comment, the EPA did indicate that their modeling showed a relaxation of the mandate would reduce corn prices by between 7 and 30 cents per bushel.

Johnson made it clear on the conference call that the agency considered economic hardship as the primary criteria for the decision, as that was the focus of the Texas request. But he also mentioned the ongoing rulemaking process that will update the RFS guidelines in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. According to the legislation, the new rules must account for lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions ethanol and other renewable fuels.

That process is supposed to be completed in the fall, but may take until next year. One of the complexities involves the emissions impacts of land use change, for instance when domestic farmers move previously uncultivated land into production for biofuel feedstocks, releasing the carbon stored in the soil; or when shifts in production of one feedstock in the United States create incentives for farmers elsewhere in the global market to move carbon-storing land into production. Because the RFS requires that all renewable fuels meet or beat GHG lifecycle reductions of at least 50 percent compared to a fossil fuel baseline, emissions from land use change are significant and can wipe out the carbon savings from burning ethanol instead of gasoline, as two major studies released in February demonstrated.

A solution to the land use problem is to grow feedstocks for cellulosic ethanol on marginal land that does not compete with food. As we’ve written about previously on Science Progress, sustainably produced biofuels have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, diversify sources of transportation energy, and support a dynamic agricultural economy—both in the United States and abroad.

RFS production mandates in the EISA (from the Renewable Fuels Association):

Cellulosic biofuels, unlike ethanol derived from corn starch, are made from the durable molecules—cellulose—that comprise the woody part of common plants. Not only does the production process result in less greenhouse gas emissions than the process for making ethanol from corn, there are hundreds of millions of tons of biomass feedstocks available every year in the U.S. for cellulosic ethanol that would otherwise be discarded as waste.

What is clear is that we need better biofuels before we need more biofuels.

Two congressional hearings this week will address U.S. production of biofuels. Today, the Rural and Urban Entrepreneurship Subcommittee of the House Small Business Committee focuses on the role of small businesses and farms in developing the second generation of biofuels. On Thursday, the Senate Natural Resources Committee will address the relationship between biofuel production and food prices.

SOURCE: NREL

A researcher examines switchgrass in the field. Grown on land that does not compete with food, switchgrass can provide a biofuel feedstock that reduces greenhouse gas emissions and expands rural economies.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer currently cites USDA statistics indicating that increases in biofuel production are responsible for only 2 to 3 percent of recent spikes in food prices; the International Monetary Fund estimates that the impact is 20 to 30 percent. As Jake Caldwell, Director of Agriculture and Trade at the Center for American Progress, explained in a recent “Food Price Crisis 101,” the causes of the increase in food prices around the world are myriad and complex. The soaring costs are a combination of changing global diets, climate change and droughts, steep increases in energy costs, as well as diversion of grains out of the food supply and into production of first generation biofuels.

But regardless of the impact on food, first generation biofuels do not necessarily reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Earlier this year, a pair of studies published in Science argued that changes in land use resulting from increased biofuel production on cropland can result in higher life cycle greenhouse gas emissions for biofuels, as carbon-storing wilderness is moved into cultivation to keep up with demand for food crops.

The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 contains a Renewable Fuels Standard stipulating that by the year 2022, the U.S. will produce 36 billion gallons of renewable biofuels. At that time, 15 billion of those gallons are to come from conventional biofuels derived from corn starch. Twenty-one billion gallons are to come from “advanced biofuels,” which achieve greenhouse gas reductions of at least 50 percent compared to a baseline for lifecycle emissions through the entire production process and on to combustion in cars and trucks. Sixteen billion gallons of those “advanced biofuels” must be “cellulosic biofuels,” which achieve lifecycle emissions reductions of at least 60 percent compared to the baseline. The legislation also stipulates that calculations of lifecycle emissions account for significant land use changes, and all biofuels must have lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions at least 20 percent less than gasoline.

To produce those billions of gallons of renewable fuel while simultaneously reducing the carbon footprint of what we burn in our tanks will require a significant amount of sustainably-produced biomass. Two primary sources include waste residue from agriculture and forestry, as well as dedicated energy crops grown on degraded land not suitable for crop production.

Estimates from David Tilman of the University of Minnesota indicate that the U.S. has abundant sources of alternative cellulosic feedstocks that do not compete with food for fertile land. He projects annual totals of 270 to 430 million tons per year of biomass from: dedicated perennial energy crops grown on the least productive or least sensitive abandoned lands; corn and wheat residues; forestry slash, thinnings, urban waste wood, and mill residues; and reclaimed paper waste. He calculates that appropriately selected and diverse crops of miscanthus, switchgrass, and mixed prairie grasses could yield 20 to 32 billion gallons of ethanol per year and achieve greenhouse gas emissions reductions of at least 50 percent.

Farmers and rural communities in the U.S. can benefit from the sustainable production of this renewable fuel. Research indicates that locally-owned production plants make an economic contribution to the community that is 56 percent higher than plants owned by absentee corporations.

But next generation biofuels can reduce dependence on foreign oil imports in the U.S. and abroad. In several, but not all developing countries, the development of a broad-based, socially responsible, and sustainable bioenergy industry has the potential to harness substantial agriculture, land, water, and labor resource advantages of those nations. The sustainable production of biofuels will require appropriate climatic and soil conditions, water resources, land availability, transportation and electrical infrastructure, and labor, but an increased emphasis on bioenergy can provide a unique economic development platform. A growing bioenergy industry has the potential to rapidly scale-up agricultural production, diversify crops, expand industrial and transportation infrastructure, and provide new sources of income and jobs in rural communities.

To ensure the growth of sustainable biofuels markets at home, the Center for American Progress also proposed a “Voluntary Renewable Fuels Certification Program,” which informed provisions of this year’s Farm Bill that provide incentives for a transparent system that certifies biofuels produced in a sustainable manner with reduced lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions. CAP has also proposed a Low-Carbon Fuel Standard, a technology-neutral policy that would mandate a 10 percent reduction in the lifecycle emissions from transportation fuels by 2020. These proposals link our nation’s agriculture with the production of renewable energy, fueling our entire economy towards a low-carbon future.

Bob Dinneen, CEO and President of of the Renewable Fuels Association testified that ethanol production has a very small effect on food prices, and may actual be keeping them down. He told committee members that corn growers heeded the market signal sent by the RFS mandate last year, producing an additional 2.5 billion bushels of corn over the previous year’s yield, of which only 600 million bushels went towards producing ethanol. Thus, he argued, there was actually an increase in available corn.

Dinneen followed up by citing research which shows that only two percent of the world supply of corn is used goes into ethanol production and that only three percent of food price increases was attributable to that production. He said the main driver of increased food prices was the price of oil. Removing the RFS, he said, would only increase the price of energy, driving up food prices even further.

Rick Tolman, CEO of the National Corn Growers Association backed up Dinneen’s claim, explaining that the main culprit of increased food prices is the price of oil, which plays a significant role in each part of the food production chain. Tolman cited a recent study suggesting that a $1-per-gallon increase in the price of gas has three times the impact on food prices than a $1-per-bushel increase in the price of corn. He also testified that only 19 cents of each consumer dollar in the United States can be attributed to farm products such as grain, oil seeds, and meat. Labor costs 38 cents, and transportation, packaging, energy, and other costs make up the remaining 43 cents. He cited USDA economist Ephraim Liebtag, who calculates that a 50 percent increase in corn prices would translate to an increase in retail food prices of less than one percent.

Don’t remove the mandates, but don’t increase them either was the recommendation from Scott Faber, Vice President of Federal Affairs for the Grocery Manufacturers Association. He acknowledged that many factors are involved in the recent spike, “including increasing global food demand, export and other restrictions, adverse weather in some countries, commodity speculation, and higher energy prices.” He said that the one factor that is under the control of Congress is the package of “mandates and subsidies diverting food into fuel production.” Congress should be mindful, he said, that rising food prices are a significant challenge to the poorest twenty percent of Americans who spend about one-third of their after-tax income on food.

The food price spike has also pushed millions of people around the world in to poverty, he said, forcing food aid programs to ration their supplies. He asked Congress to revisit the mandate schedule; to push harder for second- and third- generation biofuels; and to increase support of international food programs and agricultural development.

Fortunately, there is a sufficient supply of biofuel feedstocks that do not compete with food crops: see “Alternative Cellulosic Biomass By the Numbers.”

Bob Dinneen, CEO and President of the Renewable Fuels Association, defended the RFS, saying that it “makes more sense today then when it was passed.” He argued that the RFS plays a major role in reducing the price of gasoline and U.S. dependence on foreign oil; curtailing greenhouse gas emissions; creating new jobs; and revitalizing rural America.

He claimed that this year’s mandate, if met, will bring GHG emission reductions equivalent to taking 2.5 million cars off the road. He also addressed the recent Searchinger report arguing that biofuel production may actually cause increased GHG emissions. Dinneen cited a response to the study questioning its underlying model and said that more research is needed to address the issue. Searchinger himself has countered such critiques of the study, saying that its conclusions hold regardless of adjustments to the model.

Dinneen also testified that biofuels are also lowering oil prices, citing a recent Merrill Lynch report suggesting world oil prices would be 15 percent higher without the current expansion of biofuel production. He called for greater investment in delivery methods and transportation infrastructure to bring ethanol to where its needed quickly and cheaply.

Charles Drevna, President of the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association offered an opposing view, asking Congress to do away with the RFS and instead let the market dictate the integration of alternative (note: not “renewable”) fuels into the transportation fuel mix. He told the hearing audience that the mandates not only distort the market, but stifle competition and innovation.

He took issue with Dinneen’s claim of lower gas prices from the introduction of biofuels, saying that adding ethanol to fuel does not actually translate into cost savings at the pump. Because current biofuels have less energy content then gasoline, cars end up requiring more fuel, which offsets lower prices he said. To solidify his claim, Drevna cited a report which found that E85 ethanol cost eighty cents more per gallon then gasoline when its price was adjusted for its lower combustion efficiency.

Drevna also disagreed with Dinneen that biofuels are reducing the cost of gasoline because ethanol production is subsidized, offering the appearance of lower prices. But he failed to note that the government has been very generous in supporting oil production in recent years. As Sam Davis and Dan Weiss of the Center for American Progress point out, in 2004 and 2005, big oil companies received tax breaks worth over $17 billion over the next decade. This assistance, they also say, “continues even as BP, ConocoPhillips, and Shell just posted record first quarter 2008 profits—a combined total of $20.8 billion.”

If the ethanol subsidy is removed, Drevna argued, ethanol would be uneconomical in comparison to gasoline on a thermal energy scale. He also claimed that the U.S. lacks the necessary infrastructure to meet the mandates, leaving refiners to unfairly pay the price of penalties imposed by Congress. He asked committee members to do away with the current tariff on imported ethanol to afford flexibility to refiners trying to meet these increased RFS mandates.

Amid growing controversy, Subcommittee On Energy and Air Quality Chairman Rick Boucher (D-VA) called the hearing to revisit the RFS just five months after Congress increased the mandate as part of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 which passed at the end of last year. The polarized hearing left committee members with a wide array of considerations to mull over as they decide the fate of the RFS in the coming months. To make sense of it all, Science Progress breaks down the hearing to discuss its varying themes. First up, what’s right with the RFS and ways to make it better.

The hearing opened up with testimony from Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-SD) who introduced her bill, H.R. 5236, better known as the Renewable Biomass Facilitation Act. The bill intends to expand the RFS to allow woody biomass collected from both federal and private forests to be used in the production of biofuel that would count towards the RFS. Woody biomass—the byproducts of forest management practices—are usually burned or left to rot, releasing carbon and methane into the atmosphere and could be put to better use as feedstock for biofuels, she argued. Most committee members used their allotted time to heap congratulations on Rep. Sandlin and pledge support for her bill. Using residual agricultural and forestry biomass as biofuel feedstock would avoid competition with food crops.

Committee members then heard from Robert Meyers, associate assistant administrator at the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation who touted the President’s proposed Alternative Fuel Standard, which would replace the RFS in 2010. The AFS would include alternative, but non-renewable fuels such as natural gas and coal-to-liquid (which is a boondoggle), hydrogen, and plug-in hybrids, in addition to those renewable fuels already included in the RFS. While the AFS ups the required amount of alternative fuels in the country’s fuel supply, it gives the EPA discretion to adjust or waive requirements to protect the economy or environment from any detrimental impacts of biofuel production. He also revealed that the EPA’s report on the environmental and health impacts of biofuels—requested by Congress in 2005—will be released in the coming weeks.

Nathanael Greene, a senior policy analyst at the National Resources Defense Council, praised the RFS for its forward-looking approach, but pressed Congress to ensure proper safeguards are in place to protect the environment and food prices. He commended the RFS for properly defining lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions for biofuels to include the entire production process, as well as land use changes, which can severely alter the effectiveness of biofuels in reducing GHG emissions. He noted how the RFS requires the vast majority of new biofuels derived from cellulosic biomass to reduce lifecycle GHG emissions by 60 percent, a step away from a “more is better” policy to a “better is better” policy.

Greene recommended that Congress push the EPA to study environmental consequences of biofuels to ensure that science drives policy, not politics. He asked Congress to adopt a cap-and-trade program as part of a comprehensive approach to reduce GHG emissions and to reform the current ethanol tax credit to be technology-neutral and performance-based. Such an approach would incentivize biofuel innovation and keep Congress from picking the winners and losers in the biofuel marketplace, he argued.

But the facts are again not on their side. While cellulosic ethanol is not a silver bullet for solving the country’s need for sustainable transportation fuel, there is a sufficient supply of biofuel feedstocks that do not compete with food crops. David Tilman, of the University of Minnesota, explained at a briefing on capitol hill last month that there are good alternative feedstock sources (pdf) that are not dedicated biofuels crops grown on fertile land:

Biofuels from Residual Agricultural and Forestry Biomass: corn stover (the “useless corn stalks” the Journal refers to), straw, slash, bark, manure, and municipal waste. Ethanol derived from these materials has life cycle carbon emissions that are lower than gasoline, and none are in competition with food crops.

Biofuels Grown on Degraded Land Set Aside from Agriculture. Ethanol derived from these materials also has life cycle carbon emissions that are lower than gasoline, and none are in competition with food crops.

Tilman went on to offer these estimates for how much biofuel feedstock we could derive from waste products and vegetation grown on degraded land:

80 to 100 million tons per year: Dedicated perennial energy crops grown on the least productive or least sensitive abandoned lands.

100 to 150 million tons per year: Sustainable supplies of corn and wheat residues.

70 to 140 million tons per year globally: Forestry slash, thinnings, urban waste wood, mill residues, etc.

20 to 40 millions tons per year: Reclaimed paper and board waste.

This comes to a total of 270 to 430 million tons of biomass per year without competing with food for fertile land, which Tilman calculates would yield 20 to 32 billion gallons per year of ethanol, which can meet or exceed current 2007 Energy Bill goals for Advanced Fuels, and with ethanol that provides greenhouse gas reductions of at least 50 percent.

The factors are manifold, but one is certainly the cost of energy: agricultural production costs and food transportation costs have increased with the rising cost of oil. Nathanael Greene at NRDC adds to the list of reasons: increasing demands for food in fast-growing nations, the adverse impact of droughts and extreme weather on key producing regions, and problematic international trade policies (more on the U.S.’s own Farm Bill).

In addition to disentangling some of the causes of rising food prices, Greene points out some additional problems with the current arguments: they distract discussion from other policy measures that will have greater impacts on alleviating world hunger, and they can lead back to subsidized overproduction, which is unsustainable from an environmental and economic standpoint:

While I worry that the current mud-fight over food vs. fuel will lead to dangerously blunt policies that would throw out the biofuels baby with the bath water, I worry more that the mud-fight will distract us from doing something serious about world hunger. The argument that we should address the starvation being caused by current high prices through minimizing the production of biofuels from food crops is wrong and distracts us from the real solutions. This argument is basically calling for addressing world hunger by encouraging overproduction here in the U.S. (Less corn ethanol means more supply, more supply means lower prices — or so the argument goes.) But overproduction in developed countries comes at a high cost to our environment, to farmers around the world, and ultimately to the economies of the countries with the most hungry. Subsidized overproduction and the resulting cheap food does trickle down to feed more people, but it’s not sustainable — nor is it the most effective way to feed the poor.

The way forward on biofuels is complicated, but we can’t make the right steps if we’re arguing about the wrong things.

How can the United States help itself and the rest of the planet diversify our global sources of sustainable biofuels and foods so that farmers here and abroad enjoy less costly energy and more equitable incomes from the fruits of their labor?

The interrelations between ag policy, food prices, and biofuels production are complicated. Getting U.S. policy on the right track with a smart Farm Bill shouldn’t be.

Oil and gasoline prices would be about 15% higher if biofuel producers weren’t increasing their output. That would put oil at more than $115 a barrel, instead of the current price of around $102. U.S. gasoline prices would have surged to more than $3.70 a gallon, compared with an average of a little more than $3.25 today.

Kit Batten and Jake Caldwell at the Center for American Progress point out that while a sustainable biofuels policy must account for the life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of feedstocks, as well as land use and food production, diversifying energy sources lowers energy costs.

Everywhere, the cost of food is rising sharply. Whether the world is in for a long period of continued increases has become one of the most urgent issues in economics.

Many factors are contributing to the rise, but the biggest is runaway demand. In recent years, the world’s developing countries have been growing about 7 percent a year, an unusually rapid rate by historical standards.

The high growth rate means hundreds of millions of people are, for the first time, getting access to the basics of life, including a better diet. That jump in demand is helping to drive up the prices of agricultural commodities.

As Mooney learned from talking with Natural Resources Defense Council analyst Nathanael Green, the biofuels issue is “wickedly complicated.” Understanding the land use implications of biofuels will obviously require a sophisticated comprehension of the growing demand for wheat in countries around the world–because we all need clean fuel and healthy food.

Within the world of science, meanwhile, a similar split has emerged between biofuel critics and defenders. The pitch of battle increased dramatically last month after Science magazine published a blistering two-part attack on biofuels–a pair of studies claiming that this allegedly “green” energy source is actually terrible news for the greenhouse. Both papers focused on how the increasing production of biofuels must inevitably spark land use changes–for instance, the conversion of tropical rainforest to cropland–and how such changes will in turn cause dramatic net increases in greenhouse gas emissions.

Natural ecosystems are important carbon sinks, and land clearing itself produces considerable emissions to boot. Therefore, biofuels must pay off a considerable “carbon debt” before we can even begin to regard them as environmentally beneficial, argues the first Science paper. As study co-author Joseph Fargione of the Nature Conservancy has put it, “From a climate change perspective, current biofuels are worse than fossil fuels.”

The second Science study, by Princeton’s Timothy Searchinger and colleagues, honed in on the land use impacts of that U.S. biofuel fav, corn-based ethanol. The results were absolutely dismal: according to the study ethanol “nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increases greenhouse gases for 167 years.” Already, though, two U.S. government researchers have published strong criticisms of the Searchinger study, questioning the assumptions feeding into the agricultural model that it employs. These critics write that “conclusions regarding the GHG emissions effects of biofuels based on speculative, limited land use change modeling may misguide biofuel policy development,” and add that based on their “own analyses, production of corn-based ethanol in the United States so far results in moderate GHG emissions reductions.”

The future of biofuels does not lie in corn, even if the future of many U.S. companies and politicians might.

So what’s going on here? At the very least, it seems that even as we’ve stampeded towards large scale biofuel production, a number of very serious concerns have emerged relating to land use. Biofuels appear suspect both when it comes to threatening food supplies and also when it comes to their net greenhouse gas emissions. But just how suspect depends heavily upon the details. Consider: Brazil has developed a booming industry for deriving ethanol from sugar cane, which is both cheaper and more energy efficient than deriving it from corn. And if we can bring online efficient, large scale processes for deriving ethanol from cellulosic sources like switchgrass and wood chips–so-called “second generation” biofuels–then there may be a much greater payoff in terms of reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

But while the jury certainly remains out on biofuels as a whole, we can already say that the bizarreness of U.S. politics, which has generated strong subsidies and protectionism for our domestic corn-based ethanol industry, is probably not delivering us much environmental benefit and may well be causing considerable harm. The future of biofuels does not lie in corn, even if the future of many U.S. companies and politicians might.

Indeed, enough doubts have been raised that no one can reasonably postulate biofuels as an automatic solution to cut greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector. Depending on the details, they could actually cause dramatic setbacks. But it’s also clear from the latest research that there will be more and less efficient–and more and less destructive–ways of generating and using biofuels. Despite huge hype, massive subsidies, and strong political support in the U.S., it seems corn-based ethanol runs near to last place in the competition.

So what’s the solution here? Well, what seems to be warranted is a wait-and-see stance of biofuel moderation, such as that adopted by Natural Resources Defense Council expert Nathanael Green. When I spoke with him recently I found him concerned about biofuels, but certainly not dismissive. In particular, Green was very happy that in the 2007 energy bill, the renewable fuel standard came with greenhouse gas performance standards, which theoretically ought to ensure smarter and more sustainable biofuel production.

However, just how well the new law works to prevent bad land use outcomes will depend heavily upon its implementation–which inevitably makes one wonder about the next administration and how it will handle the matter. After all, the biofuel issue is “wickedly complicated,” in Green’s words, requiring expertise in agriculture, climate science, economics, and much more to really get around it. That makes it ideal terrain for the hijacking of science and other expert analyses in service of parochial interests–like U.S. corn growers.

Ultimately, then, if we’re going to have sophisticated, non backfiring policies on biofuels, we need a new U.S. administration that takes expert analyses very seriously–and for that matter, a U.S. Congress that can also process exceedingly complex information. If we only still had an Office of Technology Assessment. I can’t think of a better and more useful task than a study of policy options for biofuels.

Chris Mooney is the author of two books, The Republican War on Science and Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming. He blogs on The Intersection with Sheril Kirshenbaum.

He suggests reorienting our thinking about biofuel production to focus on how we use the land available, so that fuel does not compete with wilderness or food production. He offers three approaches:

The first approach is to use make biofuels from wastes, such as garbage headed to the landfill, or agricultural residues such as rice hulls and corncobs. The second is to use land that cannot be used for food crops, which might include planting natural prairie grasses on abandoned farmland or growing algae in the desert. The third is to integrate biofuel production into agriculture without diminishing CROP yields.

All approaches will require advancing current technology, and that means the government should support more R&D for advanced or “second generation” biofuels.

Science Progress spoke with Farrell in depth about the latest research and how we can shift energy policy thinking to account for land use. Read the full interview: “The Path to Better Biofuels.”

To better understand the policy implications of the new work and how it can steer farmers and policy makers towards better biofuels, Science Progress spoke with Alex Farrell, associate professor in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley. This interview has been edited and condensed.

Andrew Plemmons Pratt, Science Progress: These latest papers, from the Searchinger group and the Nature Conservancy/University of Minnesota group, claim that previous studies of carbon lifecycle emissions of biofuels ignored land use. This seems like a substantial oversight. How did previous researchers miss this, and how significant are these revisions to previous emissions estimates?

Farrell: The Searchinger paper is a very important paper. They have made the first effort to quantify the effects of producing biofuels as they ripple through the global economy. Other people have looked at this in the past, but not in the same kind of way. Mark Delucchi from the University of California-Davis has looked at this, and you can find research papers on his website. But the reason it has tended not to be evaluated very much in the past is that it’s a difficult thing to do. You need to use a model of the global economy, and no one’s really tried before.

The most important thing is to think about land. Using land to produce biofuels essentially competes with using land for food production or keeping land in wilderness. We have three possible ways to use land: wilderness, fuel production, and food production. The way we produce biofuels today, if you do one, you don’t really get a chance to do the other. You have to account for wilderness–rainforests, or even grasslands here in the United States–because these lands have a lot of stored carbon in them. So when you convert the wilderness–weather it’s grassland or rainforest–into an agricultural operation of some sort, you release a lot of this carbon. Usually, you’re burning the material on the surface, and turning over the soil so it gets oxidized. It’s the release of carbon dioxide from the conversion of the wilderness to agricultural production that is the problem.

I’ll give you a quick example to understand why it is a little complicated to understand how you might calculate this value. Imagine that I am a corn farmer and that I am in a corn/soy rotation. One year I plant corn; next year I plant soy, and back and forth. You build an ethanol plant near me and I decide I’m going to continuous corn; I plant corn every year. What that means is that the soy production is now less in the United States than it would have been otherwise. And so U.S. exports for soy go down a little bit compared to what they would have been without this ethanol plant. The price of soy internationally goes up just a little bit, and now farmers all over the world have an incentive to either farm a little more intensively–to use a little more pesticide, for instance–or to accelerate the expansion of wilderness land for agricultural production. This is in the context of expanding populations and people eating more meat, etc. But it is an effect that exists because we have a global economy.

This expansion–because we’ve got more ethanol production that is now placing land in competition for food and for wilderness–yields these greenhouse gas emissions. That’s the basic effect. Other people have not looked at it partially because it’s a very challenging to simulate all those market interactions, and partially because the other part of the calculation, a direct process emission, is also relatively challenging, and so people have just been working on the direct emissions part for the last several years.

SP: Are biofuels bad? A lot of headlines over the past few days suggest just that.

Farrell: The answer is “not necessarily.” Biofuels are not necessarily bad. What really matters to answer that question is how the material for the biofuel is produced. If the material for the biofuel is produced on land so that it competes with wilderness and food, that’s a problem. But if it’s produced in a way that does not compete for land with other uses like wilderness and food, then you probably avoid most or all of the problems. And there are ways to do this. There are at least three strategies to make what I call “better biofuels.”

The first strategy is to use waste and residues–things that really are waste that are not otherwise used. Many of them are things that we can turn into biofuels.

The second strategy is to use land that does not compete for wilderness or food. This could be severely degraded land or marginal land that you can’t get a crop on. There’s a proposal to grow mixed prairie grasses on degraded land in the midwest and to harvest it a couple of times a year, allowing the carbon in the soil to continue to build up and produce a very healthy soil bank. But you could also restore degraded land to natural ecosystems and you should consider that option, too.

The third strategy would be to integrate the production of biofuel feedstocks with food production. We don’t do that very much right now. It’s a little bit more subtle, so let me give you an example. In California, there are some farmers who cannot make a profit on a crop in the wintertime, but they could grow a cover crop–alfalfa, or mustard, or clover–if they wanted to, but they can’t really make enough money doing it. But if they could take this cover crop and sell it for biofuel production, they could actually make a profit and not effect food yields whatsoever.

So there are three strategies that can help solve this problem and that can help develop these better biofuels. An important feature of these three strategies is that they all require advanced technologies, whether it’s cellulosic ethanol production, or growing algae in the desert. The desert does not compete for the use of land for food or for wilderness because there’s not very much carbon in desert wilderness. There are several different strategies, but they all require advanced technologies, and that’s the way out of this problem.

SP: Do these new reports have the potential to damage the policy making process with regard to clean fuels? What should policy makers take away from these reports?

Farrell: I think the most important lesson to take away from these newest reports is that not all biofuels are created equal. If we want clean biofuels, then we need to demand or incentivize clean biofuels. And recent policy decisions are moving in that direction. Let me mention just two.

One is in California. We have the low carbon fuel standard here in California. Also, in the Lieberman-Warner bill, there is an emission cap that would include transportation. So those types of policies that actually measure what we’re interested in–which is low greenhouse gas emissions, among other things–those are the right kind of policies, and they provide the correct incentives to allow companies to bring these advanced technologies to the market, and for farmers to figure out how to grow better biofuels and produce them.

The second one that I would mention is the recent energy bill, which includes some provisions for advanced biofuels that require a standard of performance for low greenhouse gases, with different types of performance standards for different types of fuels. Those parts of the provision are very important. They will help move the biofuels industry in the right direction. In fact they’re essential to the biofuel industry, because those kinds of incentives will enable to biofuel industry to develop and sell the products that will have a market in the future. The way out is to create markets for these greener biofuels, as well as providing research and development support. We have some of that already, but we could certainly use more.

SP: Will the current renewable fuel standards that were enacted at the end of last year push biofuels in the right direction?

Ferrell: I think it’s important to say that the current renewable fuel standard also has provisions that grandfather in the current corn ethanol industry, and over time we need to think of a strategy to help transform that industry, giving it a much cleaner approach. It might be possible, for instance, to retrofit the existing biorefineries. Attending to that is correct, but we need to get these technologies in place first, and I do think there is some urgency to do this because the climate problem is an important one; it’s getting worse as time goes on.

SP: The Searchinger paper in particular seems to conclude that biofuel production will necessarily increase food prices. What’s the effect on food prices of increasing biofuel production both domestically and internationally? You were saying this is a complicated issue and we’re only beginning to understand the economic impacts. Is this going to be harder on developing nations than it’s going to be on the U.S.?

Farrell: Unfortunately, I think the answer to that question is probably yes. I think it’s important to say that the Searchinger paper is the first attempt to calculate these effects. This calculation of how biofuel production ripples through the global economy is a difficult thing to calculate and I would hope to see other individuals and groups attempt do these calculations and come up with these sorts of estimates, because it’s an important thing to look at. The magnitude of the effect is not at all clear, but I think it is clear that there is an effect. That said, the people who will individually be hurt the most will be very low income people in developing counties who have to buy their food. The reason is that in the United States food prices will not change very much because the actual cost of the raw material that goes into food, like the corn that goes into the corn products that we eat, is pretty small compared to the processing and the packaging. But for people who are relatively low income in developing countries, the actual price of the commodity itself is a very high portion of the actual price that they pay, and they can barely afford to buy some of these food products. Because the basic mechanism is that increased demand and competition increases the price for the basic product–whether it’s corn or vegetable oil–that is going to lead to some people being less able to afford food. But we can get away from that problem by getting away from biofuels that compete for food production and that compete for wilderness.

SP: How do these current reports influence thinking about the transition that biofuels offer as a bridge to solutions that will get us to the greenhouse gas emissions targets? Are biofuels a bridge technology to other better solutions, or are they a useful end in and of themselves?

Farrell: I think that these “better biofuels” that I have in mind, and that people are working on right now, could part of the solution in the end if they’re done right. Let’s be clear that there are pilot plants that are funded by the U.S. Department of Energy that are being built right now. One of the questions will be, “What is the mix between biofuels, electricity, hydrogen, and other things that we might imagine?” So I do think there is almost certainly a role for biofuels in the long future. A combination of innovative technologies and policies that get the industry to move in the right direction will get us there.

SP: What is the final lesson?

Farrell: This will be a very important economic issue for developing countries that have planned to export biofuels. Understanding how to help them develop their economies while preserving their forests and their ecosystems is a very important task. To some degree, this points to the problem that we are undervaluing forests and grasslands and wilderness for their carbon storage. If we were to fix that problem–which was discussed at some length at the Bali climate convention a few months ago–we would go a long way to fixing this overall problem.

In assessing the possibility of using geoengineering projects to mitigate the effects of global climate change, Dr. Daniel Schrag from Harvard University arrived at a conclusion similar to that articulated by Chris Mooney in a recent Science Progress column: given certain catastrophic warming scenarios, geoengineering would be a complex but possibly necessary solution. But he was careful to say that that, “geoengineering is a band-aid for a wound that keeps getting bigger.” He emphasized the importance and feasibility of “changing our energy infrastructure,” which he noted, “will only cost 1% of our GDP.”

Presenting on research in counter-bioterrorism, Dr. James Baker of the University of Michigan highlighted work measuring and characterizing the physical processes by which viruses and their antidotes bind to cells. He explained that understanding this process could reveal populations that are particuarly susceptible to certain kinds of viruses; from there, researchers could explore how to protect or treat those populations. He also explained that bioterrorism is uniquely difficult to prevent or respond to when compared to conventional terrorism, saying that, “bombs, weapons, and planes can be traced; but with a virus, we don’t know if it is natural or not.” He added that in investigating the West Nile virus and SARS outbreaks, the CDC examined whether or not terrorists had released the pathogens. Noting that “we haven’t had the modeling or characterization we’ve had with nuclear,” he went on to suggest that first responders need to develop more sophisticated methods for handling potential bioterror scenarios.

Dr. Jay Keasling of UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, also presented a cautionary warning on the dual-use dangers of the rapidly expanding field of synthetic biology, saying, “biology is so complex, its easier to do harm than good.” He called for “a standard-setting organization like IEEE,” that would both ensure the safety and expand the scale of the synthetic biology industry by implementing the use of prefabricated biological components. Such components would allow different biotech firms to maximize and economize their creativity while remaining within industry-imposed boundaries that will keep their creations safe.

House and Senate leaders last week reached an historic agreement to increase average car and light truck fuel economy to 35 miles per gallon by 2020. Lost amid all the hoopla is the extension of the credit for automakers’ production of flex-fuel vehicles—cars and trucks that can run on ordinary gasoline or E85, a fuel that is 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. These FFVs use less oil, and the production and use of ethanol produces 20 percent less carbon dioxide compared with gasoline.

A flexible fuel credit program, begun in 1993, gives auto manufacturers that make flex-fuel vehicles a credit of 1.2 mpg toward their overall Corporate Average Fuel Economy. The CAFÉ credit was reduced to 0.9 mpg for the 2005 model year, and this was supposed to expire in 2009. The pending energy bill will increase the credit to 1.2 mpg until model year 2014. Then, the credit will decrease by 0.2 mpg annually until it equals zero in model year 2020.

There are currently 4.3 million flex-fuel vehicles on the roads. But the Union of Concerned Scientists found that more than 99 percent of them run on ordinary gasoline because E85 is rarely available to the everyday driving public. There are only 1,261 public service stations that sell E85 out of 170,000 service stations nationwide. But availability is improving: This number is a nearly 9 percent increase from June 2007.

E85 is not readily available because the transportation infrastructure to deliver the fuel to service stations is in its infancy. In addition, oil companies have established roadblocks to the sale of E85. The Wall Street Journal found that “oil companies lose sales every time a driver chooses E85, and they employ a variety of tactics that help keep the fuel out of stations that bear the company name.”

Oil companies’ efforts include franchise agreements with service stations. The Journal reported that these “contracts sometimes limit advertising of E85 and restrict the use of credit cards to pay for it. Some require that any E85 pump be on a separate island, not under the main canopy.” These barriers reduce the availability and use of E85 and therefore the benefits from the fuel.

The House energy bill, H.R. 3221, includes a number of provisions to remove barriers to the sale of E85, including a prohibition on franchise agreements that restrict the installation of E85 dispensing equipment or limit the marketing or sales of it. The bill would also establish grants and tax credits to encourage stations to install or convert pumps and storage tanks for the sale of E85 and other renewable fuels.

These provisions are necessary to ensure that more service stations will sell E85 for flex-fuel vehicles, which will reduce oil use and carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming.

The company claims to be able to assess an individual’s risk of developing 17 diseases: Age-related macular degeneration, Asthma, Atrial fibrillation, Breast Cancer, Celiac Disease, Colorectal Cancer, Exfoliation Glaucoma XFG, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Multiple sclerosis, Myocardial Infarction, Obesity, Prostate cancer, Psoriasis, Restless legs, Rheumatoid arthritis, Type 1 Diabetes, and Type 2 Diabetes.

DeCODEme describes the service on its website:

Over the past decade, we at deCODE have analyzed the genomes of hundreds of thousands of people—more than any other research organization in the world. Through deCODEme we are putting this expertise to work for you. We will analyze your genetic information, store it securely and provide you with updates on your genetics profile as new knowledge becomes available in the field.

This service comes as the first in a series of expected announcements from other so-called “personal genomics” companies offering to sequence your genome. 23andMe and Navigenics plan to announce services like deCODEme in the near future, and each has received millions of dollars in venture capital support.

Personal genome sequencing services are not without their problems. The development of these full-scale genetic mapping services raises a wealth of potential ethical, legal, and security issues. The companies all provide significant disclaimers about the proper use of their services, and assurances of the privacy of customers’ personal genetic information. Some of the companies even have constructed ethics boards that are involved in the everyday decisions of the company.

However, many people are still concerned about the overall safety and necessity of these genomic services. Much of the research linking individual genetic differences to specific diseases is far from clear and is certainly incomplete, so it may be dangerous for these companies to make recommendations on unverified science. Also, many bioethicists have expressed concern over the possibility that people with certain genetic predispositions uncovered by these genomic mapping services may be forced to pay higher premiums levied by insurance companies against at-risk individuals. Such concerns are only the tip of the iceberg as this infant industry gains traction and picks up speed.

So, renewable energy advocates and environmentalists should support the rapid expansion of this industry, right?

Well, not exactly and certainly not unconditionally. The key thing to realize is that land is finite and there are competing demands for its use. In many cases, using land for energy means not using it for other human needs. Nowhere is this clearer than in the history of the Brazilian sugar cane industry.

Sugar has long served as an important cash crop for the Brazilian economy. In the 1960s and 1970s, many sugar cane plantations consolidated and expanded their operations—often using foreign capital—with the result that poor workers were pushed off lands they had used to supplement their food intake. As described in devastating detail by Nancy Scheper-Hughes and others, losing these small plots led to famine, poverty, sickness, and in many cases, death.

This story is not particular to Brazil. Throughout the world, particularly in areas colonized by European powers, there has long been a tension between using land to grow food for locals versus using land to grow cash crops for foreigners. Sadly, cash crops have won this battle more often than the needs of locals. In many areas, this has created slow starvation, cyclical poverty, and environmental degradation.

We must not repeat this history. If Brazilian ethanol—or any other bio-fuel—is to be part of our energy solution, we must ensure that it does not come at the expense of the world’s rural poor. President Bush visited Brazil this past March to discuss an ethanol agreement with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Any trade agreement emerging from these discussions should require limits to the overall land use of the Brazilian ethanol industry, ensuring that sufficient land remains for the rest of Brazil’s population.

Solving global fossil fuel dependence is a tricky issue that will require some hard choices to be made. However, outsourcing these costs onto the world’s poor is not the answer. We should only support bio-fuels as part of the solution if human rights are protected.

This post by Chris Jones originally appeared on Smarter Energy.

This new bacteria could lead to the creation of lifeforms that might play roles in novel medical treatments, such as biofuels generation or the digestion of atmospheric CO2. Or they could lead to lifeforms that could also be used to create deadly biological weapons.

But the AFP quotes Venter’s spokesperson Heather Kowalski as saying, “The Guardian is ahead of themselves on this.” She has also promised that Venter’s Institute will not announce the creation of artificial life until they publish a scientific paper on it. “We have not achieved what some have speculated we have in synthetic life,” she explained. “When we do so there will be a scientific publication and we are likely months away from that.”

Still, in October 2006 Venter did file for a patent on the essential Mycoplasmum laboratorium genome and synthetic “free-living organism.” Whatever the case, science bloggers and academics are already busy examining how Venter’s apparent quest could play out.

Ron Bailey at Reason’s Hit & Run blog has a summation of how artificial life will change the discipline of biology. Nature blogger Philip Ball has a blog post from June about the intellectual property implications of patenting the basic building blocks of synthetic biology, even if they are isolated by researchers. And Arti Rai has an article on possible solutions to this problem in PLoS Biology.

For an international perspective, India’s merinews has a skeptical article from a citizen, which claims that Venter’s proposed creation would not be an artificial life form since it is made from a naturally existing organism with 80 percent of its genes knocked out.

For more on Venter himself, The Guardian has an excerpt from his 400-page autobiography, set to be released on October 18.

The most recent issues of two monthly magazines, National Geographic and Wired, boast solid cover stories on biofuels – solid because they make clear the limitations of corn-derived ethanol and focus on the promise of celluloic ethanol – yet the covers themselves present two very different ways of shifting the conversation past corn ethanol and on to cellulose.

On the cover of National Geographic, the title “Growing Fuel: The Wrong Way, The Right Way,” is superimposed over an ear of corn. This is a little confusing as the article focuses (in turn) on producing ethanol from U.S. corn, Brazilian sugarcane, U.S. cellulosic crops, and algae. The article explains the lower energy return from corn-based ethanol and makes a promising case for the other possibilities. So why tout corn on the cover?

The cover of Wired is the template for the button that could, with the right marketing, start appearing on the lapels of biofuel advocates, the single word, “Switch,”woven through a stalk of switchgrass. The sub-head then drives home the point: “Forget oil. This plant is the future of energy. Inside the new science of ethanol.”

Wired takes the edgier route and quickly dismisses corn, focusing first on the history of cellulosic ethanol research, which dates to the 1970s energy crisis. From there, it focuses on the development of the industrial enzymes that break tough cell fibers into the sugars that yeast ferments into ethanol, and on the business prospects for scaling production, reducing costs, and building a national infrastructure for the fuel.

Considering the stories together, the success of the Brazilian sugarcane ethanol industry makes a strong case for the industrial possibilities of a U.S. market for cellulosic ethanol. This is the sort of coverage that biofuels deserve. This new coverage is in stark contrast to the myopic framing in Rolling Stone’s July article, which, while rightly pointing out the insurmountable problems that limit corn ethanol’s potential, conflates all the possibilities of ethanol with all the drawbacks of corn and buries discussion of cellulosic fuels at the end of the piece.

Biofuels do have a future, as does responsible mainstream press coverage of their development.