The twenty-first century is having a troubled infancy. Eight years in and it is facing the twin perils of climate change and a looming energy crisis. Solutions to both are in high demand and many research dollars and pounds are being channelled into developing environmentally-friendly, renewable resources.

Biofuels – the product of living things – certainly fit the bill, being both renewable and biodegradable. But there is always a catch. Currently, biofuels are mostly a matter of harvesting single crops grown on fertile soils such as corn or sugarcane or waste products such as straw.

In George Bush’s State of the Union address of January 2007, corn-based biofuels played a major role in reducing the USA’s dependence on oil. But it is