The United Nations insists that the globe’s various countries need to put together far more sophisticated biofuels development plans. Biofuels are mostly made, these days, from food crops. While they are praised for being far cleaner than coal and oil, and ultimately more sustainable resources, there are potential problems with ecosystem disruption and the driving up of food costs, especially in developing nations.

So, the U.N. Environment Program’s (UNEP’s) International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management Executive Director, Achim Steiner, has stated “[A] more sophisticated debate is urgently needed. On one level, it is a debate about which energy crops to grow and where, and also about the way different countries and biofuel companies promote and manage the production and conversion of plant materials for energy purposes.  [It is] clear that biofuels have a future role, but also underlines that there may be other options for improving rural livelihoods and achieving sustainable development that may, or may not, involve turning ever more crops and crop wastes into liquid fuels.”

The International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management has concluded from studies that using wood, seed oils, straw, and waste materials in general “generally more energy efficient than converting biomass to liquid fuels.”

Dr Stefan Bringezu of the UNEP’s Biofuels Working Group has expressed concerns about the pressures that the increasing need for farmland to feed a growing and more nutritionally demanding human population can put onsavannas, forests, and grasslands as demand for biofuels simultaneously increases.

“Using wastes and residues represents one safer and more sustainable path out of this dilemma,” says Dr. Bringezu.