Biofuels: Hopes ride on next generation

It did not take long for biofuels to turn from one of the darlings of the environmental movement to the bugbear.

As recently as 2004, green groups such as Friends of the Earth were calling for an expansion of biofuels to make road transport greener. Biofuels, derived from plants, are carbon-neutral over their lifetime

But when food prices started to rise sharply last year, environmental groups and development charities were among the first to blame biofuels as a major factor, and they called for an immediate moratorium on the production of ethanol.

The biofuel industry, however, was working on an answer