The world currently faces a systematic energy and environmental problem of increased CO2 emissions, decreased soil-carbon content, and global-climate change. To solve the massive global energy and environmental sustainability problem, it likely requires a comprehensive portfolio of R&D efforts with multiple energy technologies.

J. W. Lee (*)

Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, Old Dominion University,

Physical Sciences Building, Room 3100B, 4402 Elkhorn Avenue, Norfolk, VA 23529, USA

Johns Hopkins University, Whiting School of Engineering,

118 Latrobe Hall, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA e-mail: jwlee@odu. edu; JLee349@JHU. edu

J. W. Lee (ed.), Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-3348-4_1, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

The field of advanced biofuels and bioproducts, such as photosynthetic biomass energy, may represent one of the major R&D areas that have the potential to provide renewable clean energy, in additions to the other renewable energy technologies, including nuclear energy, geothermal, wind, solar, and hydropower. Photosynthesis captures more CO2 from the atmosphere than any other processes on Earth capture. Each year, land-based green plants capture about 440 gigatons (Gt) CO2 (equivalent to 120 GtC y-1) from the atmosphere into biomass [1]. That is, about one-seventh of all the CO2 in the atmosphere (820 GtC) is fixed by photosynthesis (gross primary production) every year. Theoretically, if there is a technology that could translate as small as 7.5% of the annual terrestrial gross photosynthetic products (120 GtC y-1) to a usable biofuel to substitute fossil fuels that would be sufficient to eliminate the entire amount (nearly 9 GtC y-1) of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere annually from the use of fossil fuels. The success of Brazil’s sugarcane ethanol reported in Chap. 2 has demonstrated that with the advancement of science and technology and coupled with proper policy support, it is possible for the field of advanced biofuels and bioproducts to make a significant contribution to enrich the energy market at a national and/or possibly global scale. Presently, ethanol from sugarcane replaces approximately 50% of the gasoline that would be used in Brazil if such an option did not exist. Therefore, Brazil’s sugarcane-ethanol success may be regarded as an early but still encouraging example of biofuels at least at a national scale. However, understandably, Brazil’s sugarcane-ethanol technology per se may or may not be applicable to the other parts of the world such as the United States because of the differences in climates, crop ecosystems, and various other factors. Development and deployment of other innova­tive biofuels technologies are essential to achieve the mission of renewable energy production. The following highlights some of the bioenergy R&D areas that may be of special significance.