Adding biofuels does not make anything automatically greener. In fact, it can easily do the opposite. The number of unsustainable biofuel projects in operation far outnumbers the sustainable ones. In fact, I haven’t heard of a sustainable one yet.

“……those 11 solar thermal companies building plants in the desert should follow suit.”

You mean those 11 solar thermal plants hundreds of miles away from the nearest consistent source of biomass? It is estimated that the San Joaquin hybrid project will require the transport of 250,000 tons of biomass annually, presumably with fossil fuels. Plus, our “agriculture” system is really just a soil mining industry and is utterly unsustainable. With 10 fossil fuel calories being consumed for every single biomass calorie produced from the average industrial farming operation, it is a crisis that needs tending to immediately by returning biomass to the soil. When done properly, this reduces water and energy use on the farm by orders of magnitude, increases crop resilience to pests, disease and harsh weather and cleans up our coastal zones and groundwater supplies.
Soil mining should be considered criminal behavior, with the perpetrators being prosecuted for crimes against humanity.

For solar hybrid plants located near agricultural operations, it may make more sense to invest in more solar thermal storage using molten salts (which can add a 7 hours or more to the power plant’s daily solar output) and replace biomass burning with biochar production through pyrolysis, producing combustible gases to drive the turbines and precious biochar to return to the croplands where the original biomass was sourced. Of course, this only begins to make sense with more efficient transport, meaning at the very least plug-in serial hybrid diesel trucks. If the fossil energy used per ton-mile is not reduced, it is a losing proposition to burn the biomass for energy production and is anything but “green.”

Please pay attention to energy return on investment, folks. Literally, our lives depend on it.