Bio fuels were considered the panacea in the short term for reducing green house gases. In the past, I have written about bio fuels and the issues of food production.

However, now two new studies have shown that biofuels can generate more CO2 in their entire life cycle than conventional fuels.

From Freakonomics:

The first study, led by Princeton University environment and economics researcher Timothy Searchinger, found that replacing fossil fuels with corn-based ethanol could actually double greenhouse gas emissions for the next thirty years.
[...]
The second study, led by Joseph Fargione, a scientist at the Nature Conservancy, found that by switching to biofuels, we could essentially be worsening climate change for the next 93 years, in that “[t]he clearance of grassland releases 93 times the amount of greenhouse gas that would be saved by the fuel made annually on that land,”.

Considering the targets of EU and the US and the resulting investments and land clearance in Asia Pacific to supply bio fuels, these new studies are a bombshell and a real sign that we need to think through a lot more and take actions than trying to solve the problem of climate change which may have other negative unintended consequences.