|SEND TO PRINTER| For Biofuels, Escaping from Titer Binds Is Key
When you hear a politician talking about renewable energy and
how it will remove dependence on foreign oil, reduce greenhouse
gas emissions, create jobs, and reduce gas prices, what do you
imagine? Do you think of the standard icons: gleaming solar
panels, massive concrete dams, and wind turbines? Only biofuels
can keep planes in the sky, and only organisms can efficiently
make oils and polymers to supplant petroleum—so much for that
foreign oil. Nature remains a formidable carbon-fixer and
biofuels require lots of localized refineries so biomass doesn't
have to travel far for conversion—so greenhouse gases would be
sustainably controlled, and local jobs would appear. Biofuels
are the Girl Scout cookies of public policy—something everyone
can agree on, with at least one flavor they can tolerate. The
federal government has been pumping extensive funding into
biofuels research—from subsidies for cellulosic ethanol and
biodiesel to Department of En