In the Storehouse of His Bounty: Is There Enough Feedstock for our Bioeconomy Goals?

December 26, 2022

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by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) ... In the Digest this week we reported that CHS says 9 million more acres of soybeans are needed to supply the soybean and renewable diesel plants under construction. CHS says it would force farmers to move away from corn and towards soybeans to meet that demand. CHS warned that, even shifting corn acres is not enough, their bottom line: US farmers won’t be able to supply all of the future demand.

Which means we have not been getting through, bioeconomy friends, on the subject of making methane from biomass and using it as a feedstock for renewable diesel.

We think that no matter your question, methane is the answer, for four reasons.

First, we know how to make it from biomass, at scale, it’s proven tech. Second, we know how to use book and claim systems to get methane feedstock to world-scale refineries with a minimum of carbon loss in transit. Third, upgraded RNG is more homogeneous than most mixed feedstock options for the bioeconomy. Fourth, we know how to make renewable diesel from methane, excluding carbon credits, at parity ($2.90 per gallon) with spot US diesel prices as of December 1st ($3.03 per gallon). See our coverage of T2C.

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We might ask, what is the carrying capacity of the Earth when it comes to biomass? How much biomass could there be?

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How many calories could we manufacture here on Earth, excluding aquaculture. Is there enough for a bioeconomy of materials?

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For biomass we have hope and expectations, but not certainty.

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Yet, those are problems of execution and not of capacity. For now, let us have no more talk about a feedstock shortage. It diverts focus from the real problems, emboldens enemies, divides allies, diverts attention, siphons capital, and strikes at morale.

What we have is what the novelist Graham Greene, in The Power and the Glory,. described as “a failure of imagination”.

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We have talked of shortage when what we have are deficiencies. There are four.

We are deficient in a means to move solids at a rate that is fiscally affordable or carbon responsible. We are deficient in reliable means of converting solids to liquids in situ. We are deficient in our attentiveness to the problems of supply so long as affordable natural liquids are available. We are deficient in understanding how methanogens and methanotroph can work in harness in the cause of carbon.

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The time is nigh to address the deficiencies, let us mend, and mend quickly, and mend right, and have no more of this folderol of a feedstock shortage from the biomass analysts at Hooey, Claptrap, & Malarkey. The only thing worse than a greenwash is a hogwash.

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So, friends, merry Christmas, and in the New Year let us tend to the deficiencies yet with confidence in our resources. READ MORE