Developing Hype-Cycle Resilience to Accelerate Advanced Biofuel Technology

by Ross Mazur (Sustainable Fuels Consulting LLC/Biofuels Digest) Hype, the ephemeral group discourse surrounding topics and ideas, is becoming more pervasive in our increasingly digital world. Although hype cycles, the temporal trends in societal perception of a specific technology or industry, are largely unavoidable and difficult to predict, they hold tremendous power to make or break industries. Hype can delay or even fully derail promising emerging technologies if poorly managed. Investors and technology developers therefore ignore hype at their own peril, and would benefit by best-practices, described below, to build resiliency against hype and hype cycles.

The timing and extent of investment and technology adoption influences the rate of development and ultimate success of new technologies. Although reinforcing hype has the power to enable earlier investment and deployment, these activities are generally counter-productive if they occur prematurely or are disproportionate to technical readiness.

Conversely, discrediting hype can instill hesitancy in investors and thwart promising technologies at the moment they are ready to scale. We all watched the Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC) and Food vs. Fuel disputes of the late 2000’s bring biofuels into question, with ILUC ultimately being implemented into RFS2’s (U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard) mandated LCA (Life-cycle Assessment) methodology (EPA, 2010). Although some tried to leverage these disputes to promote 2^nd generation (advanced) biofuels (Inderwildi and King, 2009), they also resulted in many conflating the risks associated with 1^st and 2^nd generation technologies (Ching, 2007; Oxfam Int., 2008; Folha de S. Paulo, 2008). Hype associated with these disputes led to RFS2 cellulosic biofuel volume mandate reductions which generated investor uncertainty, delaying investment in advanced biofuel R&D (Berti and Levidow, 2014; Bracmort, 2015).

Managing hype cycles to ensure that negative hype doesn’t kill promising technologies and industries requires an understanding of how hype cycles materialize, and their overall lifecycle.

One key network structure effect is the so-called “echo chamber” effect where a cluster of like-minded connected individuals repost the same article, leading to “social reinforcement” of other friends/followers who were otherwise uneducated or unopinionated on the topic (Mukerjee, 2017).

Another way of looking at it is if society embraces one solution, no matter the reason, then the problems inherent in that solution become easier to solve, while problems in other unchosen solutions become more pronounced. This seemingly validates the original choice when in fact another solution may have been more optimal. When society does decide to widely get behind a technology, it might not necessarily have been because it was the “best”, but rather due to a favorable perception among decision makers and the general populous. This makes ignoring hype cycles potentially fatal for an emerging technology.

... it is the decarbonization vs defossilization debate which puts our sector in imminent danger.

Even though our industry understands the impracticality of “electrify everything”, and that biofuels are the key to crashing the critical path to defossilization, many favorable of the Green New Deal (GND, here described as synonymous with those in the “green movement”) are distrustful of the promises of biofuels, seeing our industry as at best in bed with fossil interests and at worst aligned with them. This large community promotes “electrify everything”, embraces the narrative “any hydrocarbon is a bad hydrocarbon”, and is widely spreading negative hype.

It was not long ago that biofuels were preached as a key component of a renewable future by environmental groups.

Another part of managing this is to separate the concepts of advanced biofuel and renewable natural gas from petroleum-derived fuels and fossil natural gas. The “electrify everything” community have done a good job connecting the two, when in reality, big oil actively attacks biofuels policy like the LCFS and RFS.

Because of the nature of hype and echo chambers, all of those individuals unfamiliar with energy technologies who want clean and green solutions are easily influenced by the vocal “electrify everything” community who is currently portraying biofuels as synonymous with big oil. We need to drive home the message that fossil carbon is to blame, not all carbon.

Electrification faces similar challenges that are too often glossed over. These include child labor issues, environmental pollution issues, and laborer rights and pay issues stemming from poorly regulated overseas mining of metals for batteries, depletion of other natural resources, and problems with end-of-life recyclability. Acknowledging these imperfections along with the long timelines for realistic mass electrification of heavy transport and passenger airlines make a strong case that an ‘all-hands on deck’ policy is the best approach.

If educational intervention is not taken, we risk the advent of policies and regulations that negatively impact further development of advanced biofuels, at least domestically. We need to additionally insert ourselves into other venues outside of our usual industry conferences, such as “clean tech” conferences (where electrification is often a large focus) and environmental and activist meetups. We need to ensure our seat at the table with those authoring the GND, with whom, when it comes down to it, we have so much in common. Spreading our message to echo chambers besides our own, throughout society is an effective way of doing so. Additional tactics are described below.