The worst part of this is that biofuels are a false hope. They are actually accelerating our use of fossil fuels and our dependence on foreign oil, while simultaneously increasing greenhouse gas emissions and environmental damage. Both the US and German National Academies of Science as well as the non-partisan RAND National Defense Research Institute have pointed out the fatal flaws with biofuels, but the political appointees in charge don’t want to hear it and won’t stop funneling taxpayer money to their friends in the business. The German scientists, after a 3-yr study, have strongly recommended that Europe abandon all biofuel mandates. Liquid biofuels are completely and parasitically dependent upon fossil fuels for the fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides, farm machinery fuel, bio-refinery plant processing and hydrotreatment hydrogen. Even the designer enzymes used in the most advanced processes are synthesized from petroleum feedstock. Biofuels are the chemical equivalent of attempting perpetual motion: turning hydrocarbons into carbohydrates back into hydrocarbons. They are energy sinks, not energy sources. Corn ethanol is today still 40 cents a gallon more than premium gasoline on an equal energy (MPG-corrected) basis, and its price goes up and down with oil. If corn ethanol was used to make more corn ethanol, it would consume 6 times more energy than was output. It is only by robbing energy from fossil fuels that biofuels, and our modern intensiveily-farmed food crops can even exist. Making ethanol from lignocellulose requires approximately 3 times the energy as making ethanol from starch and that is why the switchgrass breakthrough has never happened and why Range Fuels and Cello are no more and why Gevo left the fuel business and why KiOR has still not opened its commercial facility and why there is still no cellulosic ethanol for refiners to blend into gasoline. There is absolutely no reason to release this plague of invasive species upon ourselves. It will be a supreme irony if it is at the hands of the EPA. Unfortunately, it will fit their pattern since 1990 of doing more harm than good, such as inflicting MTBE on the nation by mandating gasoline oxygenates that have no benefit for any American car built since 1993, and by blocking 80 MPG diesel engines (VW Polo) that can be bought in Europe but are illegal in the US.