The dream of cellulosic ethanol powered vehicles and biorefineries is slowly coming to life, climbing through contentious issues of fuel versus food, low petroleum oil prices and sustainability. Brazil is growing quickly alongside the expanding biofuel market with predicted long term demand. A recently released biofuels report by the Pike Institute held a positive outlook for biofuels, which will be supplemented by increasingly advanced feedstocks, but will eventually face competition from drop-in fuels like "green gasoline and renewable diesel." The Pike report also predicts the world biofuel market to surpass $280 billion by 2022, due in no small part to national biofuel consumption mandates. These consumption mandates result in impressive global evolution rates, with the worldwide compound annual growth rate for biodiesel from 2009 to 2022 to be 15 percent, according to Pike Research. Big oil is also making forays into biofuel, such as BP, which has already pledged over a billion to biofuel projects. In a report commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute, oil and gas companies were found to have invested $58.4 billion between 2000 and 2008.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS11201175020090724