Biofuels - a step towards sustainable development

Nowadays, a detrimental impact of the human activity on the environment is a growing concern. This issue has engendered a need for action toward sustainable development, which assumes a conscious shaping of relationships between the economic growth and concern for the environment. The new environmentally friendly technologies are mainly applied in the fuel industry. The decreasing reserves of caustobioliths (traditional fossil fuels) and the adverse influence of excessive greenhouse gas emissions on the environment favor the use of alternative energy sources including biofuels. This paper reviews the characterization and production of the most important biofuels, and the problems linked to their common use.