Bloomberg is reporting that investments in next generation biofuels have shrunk from a high of US$7.6 billion in the last quarter of 2007 to US$ 57 million in the 1st quarter of 2013. Big companies like BP and Shell are shelving projects to produce fuel from woody plants and waste because they are not economical and instead focussing on the production of biofuels from food crops, especially sugar cane in Brazil.
These new numbers make it clear that demand for bioufels, which could account for an estimated 27 percent of road fuels worldwide by 2050, up from 3 percent last year, will be met by food crops or non-food crops grown on agricultural lands.
GRAIN estimates that current mandates for biofuel use would require an additional 40 million hectares of land to be converted to growing crops for biofuel by 2020.