Biofuels and Bioenergy

Estimation of the climate impacts of biofuels and bioenergy has in general been approached by asking what would be the consequences of deployment assuming land use and other decisions were made without regard to climate. Drawing on recent analysis, the author will demonstrate that different answers result if instead we ask how bioenergy should be produced in order to achieve climate benefits. Notwithstanding important advances, the cellulosic biofuels field has fallen far short of expectations over the last decade and it is clear that technological readiness was widely overestimated. In response to this circumstance, advancing the cellulosic biofuels field needs to be more open to stepwise deployment taking advantage of niche opportunities, and to direct research and development effort to both established processing paradigms and new processing paradigms. Consolidated bioprocessing with treatment will be considered as an example of the latter.