Advanced BioFuels USA

by Dan Morgan (The Globalist)  Right now, electric cars have the momentum and the “inevitability” narrative on their side. Is the idea of pursuing two paths forward a waste of money?   … The Biden administration’s ambitious infrastructure proposal sets aside $174 billion to subsidize electric cars, but little for biofuels.

As Bloomberg News has reported, Europe is taking unprecedented steps to phase out gasoline and diesel cars and “bring an end to the almost 150-year-long era of the internal combustion engine.”

The United Kingdom has imposed a 2030 ban on the sale of cars lacking a plug, and Germany has extended for four years its subsidies for electric vehicles. China plans to produce 8 million of the vehicles by 2028.

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Benefits of a “both of the above” approach

But with liquid fuels powering 1.3 billion vehicles around the world now, a “both of the above” approach makes sense.

“A strategy of skipping biofuels and electrifying everything means choosing to use massive quantities of fossil fuels that emit the most toxic and carbon intensive emissions,” emailed me Graham Noyes, executive director of the Sacramento-based Low Carbon Fuels Coalition.

That same logic explains why the $135 billion a year global biofuels industry is betting that new innovations and investments in efficiencies will not only widen their products’ climate advantage over fossil fuels.

It also believes these investments will keep the industry competitive with zero emission vehicles deep into a coming age of electricity, and even beyond.

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Investors, corporations and farm-level bio-refineries have been backing that idea with their wallets.

Toyota’s approach

This June, for example, Raizen, an energy company based in Sao Paulo, Brazil, announced it would open a new 21 million gallon a year refinery converting sugarcane to ultra-low-carbon ethanol “to cater to increasing demand for cellulosic biofuels.”

Toyota has been experimenting with a new “flex-fuel” Prius hybrid capable of using up to 100 percent very-low-carbon ethanol.

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Shrinking bio-refineries’ carbon footprint

At the same time, a heartland biofuels industry that underpins the economies of hundreds of American farming communities is pinning its hopes on such things as a planned $2 billion dollar multi-state pipeline network.

By some estimates, this could shrink bio-refineries’ carbon footprint by as much as 25%. The pipeline will capture carbon dioxide emitted during ethanol fermentation and bury it deep underground in North Dakota.

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In California, the home state of Tesla and also the country’s largest fuel market, biofuels made from mundane agricultural products have been key in cutting the climate impact of transportation in the state by 7.5% since 2011.

The unsung workhorses of this improvement include biofuels made from corn, soybeans, hog and beef fat, manure gases from dairies, and used cooking grease.

Yes, even pig fat

Renewable diesel from “choice white grease” — the daintier name that traders use for pig fat — already powers some Amazon delivery trucks.

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The 6 million member American Farm Bureau Federation has joined an alliance with the U.S. oil industry to fight federal and state electric car subsidies seen as discriminating against biofuels — and farming communities.

Level playing field wanted?

But many in the U.S. biofuels industry believe that competition on a level playing field would be much better for the industry — and the effort to curb climate change — than a brawl in the courts and Congress.

They support the expansion of commercial carbon markets, such as one in California, in which fuels and technologies are rewarded based on their contribution to greenhouse gas abatement, as determined by regulators using data and science.

For that they are finding some powerful support. A newly-formed alliance of U.S. car companies argues that improved internal combustion engines will be needed for years. These will benefit from lower-carbon, high-octane liquid fuels, including renewables.

Electric vehicles alone are not enough

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Even under California Governor Newsom’s plan, 5 million cars in the state will still be conventional ones or hybrids in 2045, according to best-case scenarios. U.S.-wide, electric car sales have made up only 2% of the national total for several years.

Never mind that, at present, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama each have less than 3 charging stations per 100,000 population.

Plentiful and available

But biofuels are plentiful and available now, and they are having an impact, according to California’s Air Resources Board.

The year before the pandemic disrupted travel and supply chains, biofuels displaced over two billion gallons of fossil fuels, in car-crazy California.

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By comparison, the state’s half million electric cars displaced only a little over 100 million gallons of fossil fuel.

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 A detailed update published by four Argonne (National Laboratory) scientists in May estimated its (corn ethanol’s) climate impact is now 43% smaller than gasoline’s.

And it credited ethanol with preventing the emission of more than half a billion metric tons of greenhouse gases since 2005.

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The European Union’s current renewable energy directive requires that bio liquids make up 14% of the energy consumed in road and rail transport by 2030, nearly double the current figure.

Private companies have jumped in to help EU countries meet those requirements. Typical is Clariant, a Swiss-based specialty chemicals company with Saudi investors.

It broke ground last year on a southwest Romanian plant that will process wheat straw into cellulosic ethanol that can be used as a low-carbon gasoline additive. It is planning a similar project in Bulgaria.

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The European Union has likewise limited the growth of biofuels from crops, emphasizing instead growth from industrial and agricultural wastes and byproducts such as the post-harvest wheat straw Clariant hopes to exploit in Southeast Europe.

Conclusion

Even so, it is clear that biofuels are not going away any time soon. And given the threat that fossil fuels pose to the planet, that should please policymakers in Washington and Brussels, not just farmers in Iowa and the Beauce.  READ MORE

After Fires, Chevrolet Bolt Owners Are Warned: Don’t Park Indoors — Even electric vehicles serviced in response to a recall last year may still be at risk, the vehicle’s manufacturer and federal safety officials said. (New York Times)

Report counters previous research on EVs and climate (E&E News)

California’s electric car revolution, designed to save the planet, also unleashes a toll on it (Los Angeles Times/Yahoo!)

Importance of biofuels highlighted on Capitol Hill (Feedstuffs)