More likely said energy/oil companies would buy the patents/inventions (or just "do" the inventor(s) in)
i recall a similar method in the camera biz
my dad used to read camera mags and was intrigued by this new digital camera concept
it was a film canister sized 'gubbins' with a ccd where the film would be exposed that fit any 35mm camera, thus negating you to buy an expensive SLR if all you had to do was slap this thing in your expencive beauty with 4 or 5 different lenses
dont know if this was a real product or not or what the mega pixel was, but if you were a digital camera maker wanting people to ditch their 35mm for the comparable digital model it would damage your sales and all but kill the migration to true digital cameras
so it was bought lock stock and never to be seen again
but back to the fule side of it
bio fules vs crops?
in a similar way that vegans spout that a cow eats x ammount of grass on a field of yay big and when killed ammounts to whatever food, that planting crops on said field would be better per hectare
mind you some pastures are on hills ... cant see a combine managing that
but what would happen if farm land suddenly started growing corn for biofule and not for human consumption (or the product was sold to bio fules anyhows) what becomes more important, biofule or food crops?
and why in amongst all this 'need for bio fule research' did customs and excise impound (and destroy?) a car that ran on used chip oil?
because they wernt getting any revenue from petrol sales ?!?
so they say we need these alternate fules
then they get all shirty when they dont get any money from the fule sales