Production of Biofuels from Agricultural Resources

Biofuels are regarded, in the short term, as one of the most viable options for reducing CO2 emissions in the transport sector. Since 2005, its market has been expanded due to the high demand from the transport sector. More recently, consciousness and concern about the climate emergency has drastically accelerate the promotion of biofuels and other renewables as a replacement for fossil fuels. Various technologies are available to produce these biofuels. Conventional plant-based biofuels, or 1G biofuels, obtained from edible food crops, currently share 4.5% of the total transportation fuel consumption. This first generation being capped to limit its negative effect of food production, a second generation of biofuels, using biomass or agriculture wastes, should enable an increase in global production capacities in the next decades. This chapter summarizes a state of art of biofuels technologies already industrialized or under development and shows, as an example, the evolution of European biofuels legislation promoting the use of biofuels to decarbonize the transport energy mix.