Just in time for the Nobel Conference, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has fired a warning shot across the bows of the growing biofuels flotilla. The OECD, a consortium of market-based democratic governments, noted that biofuel development has been driven by a desire to develop markets for surplus agriculture production without proper attention to the most economical and environmentally successful places and ways to produce biofuels. As a result, biofuel production may be less sustainable than fossil fuel options. In the short term, biofuels development has led to tensions between food and fuel production reflected in commodity prices according to the OECD, while the long term results will be increased environmental degradation.
What should biofuel policy be?