Biofuels are tempting because on a superficial level they fit neatly with our industrial economy. Growing and processing feedstock on a large scale should be comfortably within the means of agribusiness. We have a well-developed liquid fuel distribution infrastructure. And our cars and other liquid fueled machines should be able to run on biofuels with minimal modifications.
Under the surface there are a lot of hard technical and economic problems to solve, from finding the best feedstock to turning it into fuel. The Department of Energy is addressing the problem piece by piece. The department just awarded $21 million to five projects that are focused on harvesting, packaging and (in some cases) delivering biomass for biofuels processing.
Not to dismiss the importance of feedstock harvesting and packaging, but the bigger problem is distance. The economies of scale of large biofuel processing plants are offset by the cost of transporting feedstock long distances.
The numbers are leading a lot of people to call for smaller scale distributed biofuels processing. Processing biofuels near to where the feedstock is grown makes sense, but transporting the finished product long distances nixes the benefits of biofuels over fossil fuels.
Can we place the plants close to both the crops and the regional fuel distribution centers?