A new policy report provides recommendations as to how biofuels policies can best promote their economic and environmental benefits and minimize their drawbacks. Among the conclusions are that governments should avoid simplistic changes to current policies, for example eliminating biofuels mandates and incentives. Instead, the report urges governments to initiate an orderly, innovation-enhancing transition towards incentives that coordinate the multiple goals of biofuels development.
Development of an international market to couple supply and demand is encouraged, as well as incentives for large scale R&D, and biofuel production centered in those regions where feedstocks can be grown most efficiently and where undesirable impacts are the smallest.
Further, the report warns that the potential benefits of an international market could be outweighed by the risks of damage to food and environmental systems unless adequate protective measures are simultaneously introduced. These protective measures will likely include the explicit recognition that sustainable production of biofuels cannot be expanded indefinitely. There are intrinsic limits on the productive capacity of ecosystems, constraining yields per unit of available area and the amount of area that can be dedicated to sustainable biofuels production.
[Source: Harvard Kennedy School of Government]
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