The subject of biofuels has become an important policy keyword in the minds of many government decision makers, because of its energy and environment implications. However, it has also become a "burning issue" in the light of contrasting viewpoints in favor or against the adoption of a national biofuel policy, as expressed in many publications. Consequently, "it has become increasingly difficult for decision-makers to identify the key messages on which to build their decisions". To assist governments and industry sectors in making "sustainable choices in an area that over the past few years has become deeply divided while triggering sharply polarized views", the International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management (IPSRM) of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) recently released its first assessment report, "Towards Sustainable Production and Use of Resources: Assessing Biofuels". According to UNEP Executive Director and Panel host,  Achim Steiner, "Biofuels are neither a panacea nor a pariah, but like all other technologies, they represent both opportunities and challenges". The focus of this first report is on the "first generation biofuels, due to availability of state-of-the art reviews, but also considers further lines of development". Among the highlights of the report are: (1) not all biofuels perform equally well in terms of their impact on climate, energy security, and on ecosystems; environmental and social impacts need to be assessed throughout the entire life-cycle, (2) land conversion for biofuel crops can lead to negative environmental impacts including implications such as reduced biodiversity and increased GHG emissions, (3) water is another limiting factor, both in terms of quality and quantity. The full report can be accessed at the UNEP website (URL above)..

A paper by Jeffrey Wolt from Iowa State University (United States) stresses the need for advancing risk assessment for transgenic biofuel crops as a "critical element to the rapid and cost effective development of plant biofuel resources". The use of modern biotechnology (in this instance, the use of "transgenics") is seen as an enabling technology that is "implicit in the successful movement towards a biofuel future". Transgenic biofuel feedstock cases include strategies to (1) improve the feedstock's "processability" for biofuel conversion (for example, imparting in planta bioprocessing enzymes, such as built-in amylases or cellulases within the plant, to reduce saccharification costs), and (2) to increase the feedstock tolerance to environmental stresses when grown in marginal land areas. The "use of a particular transgenic concept" often undergoes a broad range of commercial, regulatory, or public scrutiny, and considerations are often approached within a narrow, regulatory context, and a broader decision context. The paper discusses the advancement of transgenic plant risk assessment (with reference to bioenergy crops) by "appropriate interfacing science with the needs for decision-making". The full paper is published in the open access journal, Biotechnology for Biofuels (URL above)..