It's been obvious for some time that using food crops as fuel (first generation biofuels) is a terrible idea. Well, obvious to everyone except the governments s

It's been obvious for some time that using food crops as fuel (first generation biofuels) is a terrible idea. Well, obvious to everyone except the governments subsidising them. What people are still interested in is 2nd gen - converting inedible biomass (mainly cellulose) into liquid fuel - and 3rd gen - growing algae, which have all sorts of cool properties. In theory, you can engineer the algae to produce a usable fuel directly. In practice, it's still proving tricky.