The correlation between development and energy consumption is well known. This is quite reasonable as we can consider the gross energy consumption from a society, as a way to amplify the human effort. Likewise, technological change allows for great development with a modest increased consumption of primary energy.

Energy access and its use strongly affect and are affected by population growth, urbanization, or development possibilities and poverty alleviation of a great part of the population. For example, energy consumption patterns of a third of humanity that use biomass as the sole source of energy, tend to reinforce their extreme poverty situation. Hundreds of millions of people, especially children and women, spend several hours a day looking for firewood or carrying water from considerable distances, this causes them to have fewer opportunities for education or more productive activities.

Current development and consumption model along with increased energy waste from rich people as well as consumption patterns from the most disadvantaged creates pollution and destruction that leads to poverty, and this poverty at the same time pollutes and destroys. This is the vicious circle: consumption — pollution — poverty. This is a complex relationship network, not always obvious, in which certain phenomena are cause and effect at the same time and no element can be considered separate or isolated. One of the most important challenges humanity has to face is to find how to produce and use energy in ways that in long term human development, in all its dimensions, is promoted: social, economic and environmental (Perez, 2002).

It is expected that in the course of this century, the use of oil for producing electricity will be replaced by gas, clean burning coal, energy from renewable sources, and nuclear energy. However, the largest contributors to oil consumption and increased pollution is the transport sector, where in the medium term there is not yet a replacement, since current petroleum products are characterized by their high calorific value, they are also easy to store, carry and use.

The creation of liquid biofuels has been one of the ways that science has developed for replacing gasoline and diesel and preserving the environment. Modern bioenergy technologies are renewable energy sources that produce transportation fuels and are advancing very fast, mainly towards ethanol made from maize or sugar cane, which is blended with gasoline in order to reduce both oil consumption and pollution. To use ethanol as fuel by blending it with gasoline, it is necessary to remove water for purity close to 99.9%, which requires special distillation methods.

Bioenergy competitiveness is associated with oil price, if price keeps current trends, there will be options for those trends. It must be considered if benefits and efficiency of these new fuels could survive without stimuli (subsidies) that now favor them. In a realistic framework it is necessary to avoid ambiguous positions that require a choice between biofuels or food production. It is important to combine both processes and add technology that improves production. But food safety issues cannot be jeopardized.

Security of supply is synonymous with the availability of all the energy needed, at an affordable price and for a long time, in fact indefinitely so it can be sustainable. If supply security is considered from a national perspective; dependence on external resources and the uncertainty of this non native supply becomes an important aspect.

"Opportunities for developing countries to take advantage of biofuel demand would be greatly advanced by the removal of the agricultural and biofuel subsidies and trade barriers that create an artificial market and currently benefit producers in OECD countries at the expense of producers in developing countries "said the director general of FAO, Jacques Diouf.

In the coming decades several challenges must be faced because of the energy and environmental problems arisen from it:

Energy efficiency: It will be necessary to radically increase the energy efficiency of processes and systems.

New technologies: It is necessary to develop and incorporate new technologies that achieve the above goal.

Diversify energy sources: At the moment we strongly depend on hydrocarbons as a primary energy source. It is necessary to incorporate new energy sources: natural gas, biomass, wind power, micro-hydro, solar energy and others.

Cogeneration: cogeneration as a means for energy efficiency and savings is not new. But incorporating it into the system on a grand scale may have a very large positive impact.

Then it is important to recognize that biofuels will not end industrialized countries’ dependency on oil — not even Colombia-, because there will not be enough land and water to meet the high energy demand. In spite of this, the development of a national biofuel industry is an opportunity for the country. There are a number of technological, regulatory, economic and environmental restrictions or challenges that may affect critical links in the chain of biofuel production, and if they are not superseded they could lead to failure.