BP plan brings warnings about biofuel technology

Biofuel research is worth doing and may be one of many essential tools to limit damage from future climate change, but there are big environmental and social risks if it’s pushed too hard and too fast.

That’s the warning from some experts familiar with the history of biofuels and the outlines of UC Berkeley’s controversial $500 million energy research pact with oil industry giant BP to create a research center at Berkeley to be named the Energy Biosciences Institute.
The institute’s primary goal will be facilitating the production of biofuels on a scale large enough to result in a net drop of carbon emissions linked to vehicles — potentially a huge step in society’s response to a changing climate

“This is an exciting prospect and a real opportunity,” said John Harte, a UC Berkeley professor of energy and resources, “but we’re going to blow it if we don’t get the whole project off the ground at the beginning in a way that’s compatible with good research on the social, economic and environmental consequences.

“There are serious concerns about this technology. To many of us, it doesn’t appear to be a free lunch, and we want to understand how much this lunch is going to cost us.”

San Francisco Chronicle