20 April 2011: The International Energy Agency (IEA) has released a report entitled “Technology Roadmap: Biofuels for Transport,” which describes the necessary steps to realize ambitious global biofuels targets.

The Roadmap is based on the premise that biofuels could provide up to 27% of total transport fuel worldwide by 2050. In addition to describing steps to achieve this goal, it identifies key actions to be taken by various stakeholders, and the role of government policy in ensuring that production expansion of conventional and advanced biofuels is economically, ecologically and socially sustainable.

The roadmap includes sections on: biofuels status today; the sustainability of biofuel production; a vision for technology deployment and CO2 abatement; the importance of land and biomass resources; economic perspectives; milestones for technology improvements; a policy framework including roadmap actions and milestones; and near-term actions for stakeholders.

Key findings of the report include that: the efficiency of conventional technologies must be drastically improved and advanced biofuels need to be commercially deployed; support policies should incentivize fuels with the best life-cycle greenhouse gas performance, supported by strong policies ensuring food security and biodiversity protection; trade will be an important part of increasing global biofuels use and can be used to mobilize investment; assumed scale and efficiency improvements will make most biofuels cost-competitive with fossil fuels by 2030; and marginal savings or costs of using biofuels over fossil transport fuels are only plus/minus 1% of total costs for all transport fuels. [IEA Press Release][Executive Summary][Key insights in graphics] [Publication: Technology Roadmap- Biofuels for Transport]