ABSTRACT
The message provided by the references and case studies in this chapter is that today the search for energy is a world apart from days of the oil prospectors, who roamed the earth in search of conventional and easily accessible petroleum deposits. Wildcatters and engineers of large oil companies still travel, but now they are looking thousands of feet under the surface of the earth. A pragmatic argument on environmental conservation is that the real benefit from biomass would come from displacing fossil fuels not only in terms of a better emissions ratio, but also in making the European Union and the United States independent of foreign sources of oil. Most importantly, for the European Union and the United States biofuels are the way of getting out of the yoke of oil-producing countries and their blackmail. The use of biofuels has been promoted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and ongoing commitments to the US Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS).
