Science News Online has a great article reviewing the emerging technologies in the biofuels area. Many of them have been subjects of previous posts in The Energy Blog, but putting them all together puts a fresh perspective on the future of biofuels. Despite the excesses that make up much of the Energy Act of 2005, advocates of biofuels should be fairly happy with provisions of the act that directly promote their agenda. With the rising prices of oil products biofuels are about the only answer to augmenting our liquid fuels supplies, not to diminish the importance of the conservation benefits of more fuel efficient vehicles, plug in hybrids, electric vehicles and mass transportation. Neither conservation efforts or biofuels alone can totally mitigate increasing prices, but without extreme efforts on both fronts supply and demand can do nothing but increase the price of fossil fuels.