Why are synthetic fuels and gases so vital?

Biomass-derived synthetic fuels hold the key to our future. We will no longer have the current problems with process efficiency losses once enough money and technology are invested in creating synthetic fuels.
We need a situation in which the amount of energy used to create synthetic fuels is less than the amount of energy ultimately stored in the fuel itself.
Although synthetic fuels cannot currently compete economically with fossil fuels solely on the basis of cost per unit of energy, this will not be the case indefinitely, and the sooner governments and big business get behind the development of synthetic fuels, the sooner we will no longer be reliant on fossil fuels.