Biofuels and Bioenergy: How green are they?

Biomass is the organic fraction of both agricultural products, from forestry and related industries, and industrial and municipal waste. This includes for example wood, straw, energy crops, agricultural waste, agro-industrial waste, plants and animal waste.
Bioenergy is the production of energy from biomass for uses in transport, heat or electricity. In the field of liquid biofuels for transport, important programs have been launched in Brazil since the end of the seventies but also more recently in the United States and the European Union. In the United States mainly corn is used for ethanol production. In Europe, rapeseed, sugar beet and corn are used for 1st generation biofuels. Second generation biofuels from ligno-cellulosic material might become operational in a few years.
Within this context, since one of the drivers for bioenergy development at worldwide level is climate change policy, an important question to be answered is:
How green are biofuels and bioenergy?

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