According to Dave Cohen, Steven Chu sees no particular urgency to our current problems.
His way of dealing with potential shortfalls is described as follows:
"The answer is let efficiency take care of it, at least in the foreseeable future 5, 10 or 15 years from now. Chu’s reasoning is based on his miscalculation that we have between 10 and 40 years before oil & natural gas production, taken together, will peak and decline. Efficiency is supposed to double the time we have to find replacement fuels, so Chu has recast the problem to give himself the 20 to 80 years he requires to find a way to replace oil. (Biopact, October 8, 2007)."
The problem with Fourth Generation Biofuels is that they are way, way, way off in the future, if they can be done at all.
The plan is to somehow improve the whole process through bioengineering to do what nature does not do now. Is this a sensible way to approach a very real current fuel problem? Read more from the Drum