…I’m here to talk about the role of advanced biofuels and why at BP we believe we need to get them into the market sooner.  We believe this is necessary if biofuels are to fulfil their potential. Biofuels have a great future in the long term – but only if they overcome a series of hurdles in the short term.

Let’s not lose sight of the prize. Biofuels should become the primary means of bringing secure, sustainable, low-carbon fuel to vehicles in the next two decades.

… They need to be less expensive than many biofuels are today. Policy-makers will not protect biofuels forever and they need to be able to compete with crude as a source of motor fuel. They need to be lower in emissions than many biofuels are today. Climate change is a major driver for the rollout of biofuels and increasingly the advantaged fuel will be the low-carbon fuel. We need fuels that are indisputably green.

Biofuels need to be scalable. Feedstocks, production facilities, distribution, infrastructure – all of these need to be developed on a completely different order of magnitude to today. Most important, biofuels need to be sustainable – sustainable in an economic sense – as I’ve said – but crucially sustainable environmentally.

… There is no credible evidence that links biofuels expansion to indirect conversion of high-carbon value land types to any large degree. And if actions are only focused on the biofuels industry, more significant causes of land use change will be missed. … What is needed is a good land management strategy to address direct land use change.

… Calculations also need to factor in what would happen without biofuels – the ‘environmental opportunity cost’ in terms of emissions from fossil fuels that would be generated instead.

… Your electric car today in many markets is to a large degree a coal car. Advanced biofuels, on the other hand, need no new infrastructure and have no issues of distribution or storage. Advanced biofuels are the only source of secure, scalable, competitive, low-carbon transportation energy for the future and we simply have to make them work.

… The next hurdle to overcome is cost. In the medium term, biofuels cannot expect ongoing taxpayer subsidy. They will need to compete with crude oil as a feedstock in a world where the only support is provided by a more widespread and robust carbon price.

… You get fewer than 4,000 litres of ethanol from a hectare of corn with a good deal of fertiliser, whereas you can get around 7,500 litres from a hectare of sugar cane and it can be grown on under-utilised land irrigated using only rainwater. The coproducts of bagasse and vinasse can be used for power and fertilisation, creating a self-sustaining system. Ligno-cellulosic crops such as energy grasses can be grown intensively to great heights and produce yields of 7,000 to 14,000 litres per hectare. The more of the crop you can use for fuel, the greater the GHG benefit. Cellulosics can also be grown on marginal land.

… Meanwhile, there may be even better feedstocks, processes and molecules out there for the future. The confluence of the worlds of energy and biotechnology is in its infancy and we need to make substantial R&D investments to see where it can take us.  READ MORE

 

 

 

 

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