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Biofuel Bubble

I just read a good article in BusinessWeek titled "The Biofuel Bubble".  The gist of the article is that biofuels start-ups (particularly those focused on ethanol) are going to fail or be absorbed by oil and gas majors.  Ethanol will be limited by the infrastructure that can absorb it (i.e. current automobiles can't take much more than 10% ethanol in the gasoline mix).  Firms, like LS9, that are more focused on diesel or gasoline-like fuels will be better off.  The article also discusses some of the limitations around feedstock.  The article highlights:
Producing 30 billion gallons of fuel takes 300 million or more tons of plant material. That's more than the total weight of cars and light trucks sold in the U.S. over the past 10 years. Growing this much cellulose would take at least 30 million acres of land. "I think the biggest problem for everybody is how are we going to grow, gather, store, and treat the biomass," says Brent Erickson, lobbyist for the Biotechnology Industry Organization.
I suppose that's where the variety of approaches (algae, different types of biomass, etc.) will be important.  It's unclear what the minimum efficient scale will have to be to make each of these potentially niche processes cost-competitive in the short-run.  And who will fund the capacity build-up?

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