Why Spend Money on Biofuels?

"Biotechnology" is a broad term applied to the use of living organisms for production of foods, biochemicals and medicines, and many households use biotech products in everyday life. However, at present, most funding for biotechnology is spent on biomedicine, and less money is allocated for other areas of industrial biotech. This is obvious to anyone looking for a job in the biotech industry as there are far more jobs at pharmaceutical companies than in bioproducts or biofuels.

I suspect, however, that this is slowly changing over time. Many countries have set some ambitious goals for reducing greenhouse gase emissions, and funding for biofuels falls under that agenda.

Biofuels are considered advantagous since they contribute to a closed carbon cycle as opposed to fossil fuels which release new, previously trapped carbon from underground, into the atmosphere. When plants are grown for biofuels, they sequester carbon dioxide from the air, are harvested to make fuel that releases carbon dioxide upon combustion, which is then re-sequestered by new plants, thus balancing the cycle.