Barriers and opportunities in renewable biofuels production

Researchers have identified two main challenges for renewable bio-fuel production from cheap sources. First, lowering the cost of developing microbial cell factories, and second, establishing more efficient methods for hydrolysis of biomass to sugars for fermentation. 

Sources say that, it is technically possible to produce biofuels from renewable resources by using microbes such as yeast and bacteria as tiny cell factories. However, in order to compete with fossil-derived fuels, the process has to become much more efficient. But improving the efficiency of the microbial cell factories is an expensive and time-consuming process, so speeding-up the cell factory development is therefore one of the main barriers.