Q&A: IEA Counts on Biofuels in Clean Energy Transition

by Sophie Barthel (Argus Media) The biofuels industry has been strongly impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, but is expected to bounce back in 2021, according to the IEA. As member of the Biofuture Platform, an initiative for worldwide collaboration on fighting climate change, the IEA aims to facilitate the recovery as well as the development of the sector. IEA renewable energy division head Paolo Frankl spoke to Argus about the platform's role in the post-pandemic green recovery and the obstacles that need to be overcome.

The platform's vision is largely based on IEA's Technology Roadmap of Sustainable Bioenergy. The IEA officially became facilitator of the platform in February 2019 and is also the coordinator of the new Clean Energy Ministerial initiative (CEM) which was launched in September 2020 and aims to accelerate bioenergy in energy transition. Within that role, the IEA shares its analysis and expertise on bioenergy, for instance is leading the work on the Policy Blueprint.

In August 2020, the Biofuture Platform launched a set of voluntary principles, intended to offer guidance to governments and policymakers around the world on the need to promote the sustainable bioeconomy in both short-term relief packages and broader post-Covid economic recovery programmes. The principles have the support of the Biofuture Platform member countries, and were developed following consultations with policymakers, industry experts and international organisations. The five principles for post-Covid bioeconomy recovery urge policy makers to keep existing policies in place and not lower policy ambition, to consider short-term Covid-support for biofuel producers and to reassess fossil fuel subsidies. They suggest to strengthen biofuel ambitions, for example by introducing blending mandates for sustainable aviation fuels as part of recovery packages for airlines, and to rewards sustainability by incorporating life cycle greenhouse gas emission reduction requirements and sustainability measures into biofuels policies.

The platform provides a forum to discuss and learn from sustainability practices of member countries around the world, and represents a shared commitment for member countries to do so.

A major outcome of a workshop that the IEA secretariat, the IEA Bioenergy Technology Collaboration Programme and the Biofuture Platform supported with other organisations — including the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) and the Global Bioenergy Partnership (GBEP) — in May 2019 was that sustainability criteria should apply to all biomass and not just to the portion of it used for transport biofuels or bioenergy.

For example, a number of advanced biofuel technologies such as lignocellulosic ethanol and biomass gasification use residues and do not directly compete with food resources. But many of these technologies remain at the demonstration phase. Domestic policies and investment could help commercialise these technologies and deploy them at a larger scale.

Policy frameworks are still unfavourable and need more incentives to use biofuels and the lack of clear sustainability requirements for advanced feedstocks are further barriers.

There are sufficient, sustainable resources, such as forest residues, agriculture residues and potential for energy crops to expand modern bioenergy to 150 exajoule (EJ), in line with what the IEA sees as necessary to meet sustainable energy supply. But governments must include sustainability requirements in their biofuel policies and support biofuel technologies to process those feedstocks.

In the near term, the IEA expects biofuels to grow by 10pc from 2019 levels by 2025 under existing policies and HVO in particular is expected to nearly triple from 7mn litres in 2019 to 17mn litres by 2025.

Over 2023-25, average output of renewable diesel (biodiesel and HVO) is anticipated to be 63bn litres, 30pc higher than 2019 levels. Expanding HVO production in Singapore and the US accounts for over half of this increase. HVO production allows for an expanded scope of sustainable feedstocks, and is therefore complementary to biodiesel.

Nevertheless, the impact on feedstock competition is unclear and will depend on policy design and relative costs.