Biofuel, a technology once championed by Henry Ford and Rudolph Diesel, is roaring back into public consciousness after almost a century of oblivion.

Among the factors contributing to its comeback are soaring oil prices, climate concerns and government anxiety over dwindling oil reserves. The combination has led more than 40 governments to enact biofuel consumption mandates that not only set annual targets for adoption but also provide tax incentives and subsidies to the companies supporting this emerging technology.

To varying degrees, it is working. As of 2007, WorldBioPlant.Com, a database service created to track biofuel development, reports that there were 954 biofuel plants - 386 biodiesel and 565 bioethanol - in 56 countries with a cumulative output capacity in excess of 43 billion gallons, or 163 billion liters. Dig down into who is helping fund such projects and big oil names like Royal Dutch Shell, BP and Chevron come up, as do automakers like Daimler, General Motors and Volkswagen who get tax credits for producing vehicles that can burn “green” fuel.

Retailers, a vital link in the chain, are also beginning to jump on board. Last month, a biofuel producer in the United States, VeraSun Energy, made a deal with Kroger, a leading U.S. grocery chain, to sell its 85 percent ethanol blend at 20 of its convenience store locations in Texas. The fuel, known as E85, is intended for the small but growing rank of flex-fuel vehicles capable of running on either conventional gasoline or on high-percentage blends.

That the deal was done in Texas, home of many of the biggest U.S. oil companies, is symbolic of the growing interest in and legitimacy of biofuels as an alternative energy source. Whether and when that interest will translate into big profit for makers of biofuel is harder to gauge.

Biofuels account for a minuscule part of the overall fuel market. Biofuel sales reached $25.4 billion in 2007 - trailing only wind power, at $30 billion, in the alternative space - and are projected to grow to $81.1 billion by 2017, according to Clean Edge, a research firm in Oakland, California. Alternative fuels of all types, including fuel ethanol and biodiesel as well as synthetic crude and fuels, accounted for only about 2.6 percent of total fuel output in 2006, according to data released by Goldman Sachs International at the end of last year. Even with continued government support, alternative fuels are not likely to exceed more than 5 percent of the market by 2015, Goldman said.

“Biofuels in this country are clearly supported by government policy and not economically viable on their own,” said Marc Levinson, a senior commodities research analyst for JPMorgan. By support, Levinson is referring to the recently expanded U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard, which raised targets on biofuel consumption, including advanced biofuels - defined as cellulosic biofuels and biomass-based diesel - to 36 billion gallons by 2022.

In Levinsons view, there is “no way” the U.S. biofuels industry will be able to meet the targets. Levinson said he believed that the U.S. biofuel industry would either need to find more efficient ways of converting existing feedstocks into biofuel or turn to outside sources like Brazil, which is rich in sugar-ethanol but faces heavy U.S. import tariffs.

Brent Erickson, a former oil industry lobbyist and now an executive vice president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, said he believed that the U.S. directive was not unrealistic: “It guarantees a market for biofuels” and is a “big risk reduction” for corporations and private equity that might want to invest. Erickson pointed to the Brazilian government, which adopted an aggressive biofuel policy mandate over 30 years ago. Today, some 40 percent of its total transport fuel comes from locally grown sugar cane turned into fuel for 75 percent of Brazils total automobile fleet.

As a form of combustible fuel, commercial biofuels come in two primary forms: fuel ethanol derived from fermented plant sugars and starches, and biodiesel made from plant and animal oils converted into fuel.

Critics of biofuels contend that they contribute to higher commodity prices and encroach on food supplies and that their production processes deplete the environment.

Given the growing criticism, policy makers have become more conditional in their support. In February, several members of the European Union called for a review of the 1998 Fuel Quality Directive as a means of enforcing stricter environmental and sustainability standards on biofuel procurement and use within the bloc.

To Martina Otto, who heads the energy and transport policy unit of the United Nations Environment Program, the backlash against current-generation biofuels is neither surprising nor wholly damning.

NEW YORK: Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, added fresh warnings on Friday about a gathering wave of home foreclosures bearing down on American communities, while pledging new regulations to limit the impact and crack down on predatory mortgage lending.

“Mortgage delinquency and foreclosure rates have increased substantially over the past year and a half,” Bernanke said during a speech in Washington. “Behind these disturbing statistics are families facing personal and financial hardship and neighborhoods that may be destabilized by clusters of foreclosures.”

“These realities challenge to find ways to prevent unnecessary foreclosures,” and “ensure a regulatory environment that promotes responsible lending,” he added.

President Bush, too, acknowledged Friday that the nations economy was going through troubled times, but cautioned against overreacting to current problems, saying such actions could cause longer-term problems.

Speaking at the Economic Club of New York, Bush said “in a free market economy there will be good times and bad times” and acknowledged “were going through a hard time.”

Bush praised Bernanke saying he was “doing a good job under tough circumstances.”

But the Fed chairmans words before the annual meeting of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition were perhaps most notable for what they left unsaid: At a time of grave concern about a recession that many economists believe has already begun, Bernanke offered no clues as to whether another cut in interest rates is in the offing when Fed governors convene on Tuesday.

Nor did Bernanke touch on intensifying fears about the global credit shortage spawned by the unraveling of American mortgage markets. The severity of that crisis was brought home with stunning clarity by the mornings news that Bear Stearns, the venerable Wall Street investment bank, was leaning on emergency financing from JPMorgan Chase and the New York Federal Reserve.

Even before the public distress call from Bear Stearns, markets had already assumed the Fed would drop the federal funds rate by at least half a point and probably three-fourths of a point at next weeks meeting.

In aggressively lowering the rate on what banks charge each other for overnight loans in recent months, the Fed has been seeking to stir economic activity: Lower rates make it easier for banks to get their hands on cash, which traditionally makes them more likely to lend, giving businesses the wherewithal to invest and hire workers.

But lower interest rates also tend to increase inflation, because more easily flowing money leads to more buying, which pushes prices up.

As it has dropped rates, the Fed has acknowledged longer-term concerns that this easing could ultimately worsen inflation, even while concluding that the immediate threats to the economy - tight credit, plummeting home prices and a deteriorating jobs market - demand freer credit at once.

Data released by the government on Friday morning appeared to give the Fed a little extra room to tilt further toward stimulating the economy while worrying less about inflation: The Consumer Price Index showed that inflation was essentially flat in February. That lent some credence to the argument that as the economy slows, this will diminish demand for goods, and that will automatically apply the brakes to price increases.

Many analysts, however, argue that the February figure was an aberration. Gasoline and food prices have been rising sharply, and this should be reflected in the data for March, removing whatever cushion Fridays numbers appeared to provide.

None of this occupied Bernankes time at the podium in Washington. Instead, the Fed chairman focused on the widening crisis in American real estate, while advertising the merits of a set of proposed new regulations he unveiled in December.

KIMITSU, Japan: Sparks fly and a wall of heat hits you as 300 tons of molten iron pour from a huge bucket into a furnace amid wailing sirens at Nippon Steels Kimitsu plant near Tokyo.

Elsewhere in the factory, a thick, red-hot plate of steel slides along a production line below an elevated walkway. A protective jacket and helmet are supplied, but you still get toasted as you walk across.

High temperatures are the norm in a steel mill, but Nippon Steel, one of the worlds largest steel makers, is more worried about another kind of heat.

“The common concern of top executives at steel makers is how to avoid being taken over,” Akio Mimura, president of Nippon Steel, said in an interview in December.

The company knows how to pour, pound and roll high-quality steel, but big rivals are catching up and there is a constant battle for customers as the world splits into two or three large steel groups.

“In a world where 50- to 60-million-ton-a-year mills are becoming common, everybody knows that size matters,” Mimura said.

Nippon Steel may be No. 2 in the world, but it lags far behind the world leader, ArcelorMittal. Born in 2006 through the merger of two companies whose names it combines, ArcelorMittal produces 118 million tons of steel a year and is three times the size of Nippon Steel, which suddenly feels vulnerable to a takeover.

Adding to the heat are skyrocketing iron ore prices and the mining giant BHP Billitons $147 billion takeover bid for Billitons rival, Rio Tinto, which threatens to squeeze steel makers margins.

Nippon Steel already faces a 65 percent jump in iron ore price this year and skyrocketing prices for coking coal, freight and alloys, although it expects that strong demand for Japanese ships and cars will allow it to pass on most of the higher costs.

Nippon Steel has hardly had a moments peace since its birth in 1970 in a merger of two Japanese firms, Yawata Steel and Fuji Steel.

In the late 1980s, its home currency, the yen, doubled in value in the course of a 30-year flat patch for global steel demand. Nippon Steel cut its work force by three-fourths and shut four of its 13 blast furnaces.

The 21st century brought another challenge as the automaker Nissan Motor, frustrated with buying steel from a myriad of small suppliers, demanded steep discounts and threatened to cut the number of companies it bought from.

It was tough at the time, but the pressure forged a much stronger Japanese steel industry built around five companies, with Nippon Steel still the biggest.

Japans dynamic car industry has played a big part in Nippon Steels success. Its strategy has been focused on sharpening its technological edge so that carmakers and other manufacturers cannot survive without its steel.

But it is now aggressively seeking growth in volume as well, as the worlds fragmented steel industry consolidates into fewer, bigger groups to negotiate better with both customers and miners.

Mimura has struck deals in the past two years to build or expand automotive steel plants with partners in the United States, China, Brazil, India and Thailand - in some cases buying shares to lock the firms together.

Collaborators include Posco of South Korea, the Baosteel Group of China, Tata Steel of India and Usiminas of Brazil. More are being considered for potential mergers.

“Friendly mergers and acquisitions are one of our options,” Mimura said. “We need to further expand into overseas markets if we are to seek growth.”

Japanese steel makers enjoy booming demand from car and shipbuilding industries and from a seemingly insatiable appetite for steel in China.

With fewer, bigger steel makers, they now have more bargaining power over large customers like Toyota Motor; Komatsu, the maker of earthmoving machines; and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the machinery maker.

A technological edge and close contacts with picky clients have also set high barriers for would-be competitors.

At the Kimitsu plant, Nippon Steels humming production lines capable of turning out 10 million tons a year are a showcase for its hidden know-how.

It produces new kinds of high-grade steel, like an extremely strong but thin, soft, easy-to-form steel used in car bodies that helps cut their fuel consumption.

In the past five years, Nippon Steels profit has nearly quadrupled, along with its share price.

But the heat never goes away for long. Concerns about the repercussions of the U.S. subprime housing crisis and a need to buy ore from miners, rather than having its own mines, have added new pressures for Nippon Steel.