Welcome to Aviation Biofuels Math Class with Mr. Mercutio

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) If you were reading BBC’s coverage of the aviation biofuels space yesterday, you would have seen the provocative headline:

Then would have looked in vain for the quoted reference to “pipe dream”…because there wasn’t one. Just the invention of a bored editor. If that gives you an instant grasp of the quality of dialogue offered by the Fourth Estate on aviation biofuels, then the BBC has rendered a service.

But, we’ll say it. Though the technology in question, Gevo, was unfairly caught in the crossfire over what are essentially airline industry goals — there are indeed pipe dream aspects in IATA’s 2050 targets. As Mercutio said to Romeo, “a plague o’ both your houses.”

In the BBC article, the closest thing you would have found to the phrase “pipe dream” was a single quote from a noted anti-biofuels activist, labeling the entire effort to make aviation jet fuels “fairytale stuff”.

The grounds? That “no one in their right minds would ever pay” 2-3X for solar aviation fuels.

Solar energy advocates must be laughing hysterically. They’ve received those kinds of deals repeatedly in their quest for scale. And good for them. They have translated those industry-building arrangements into economies of scale that have them on target to deliver cost-parity energy soon, in selected markets. These type of arrangements are a) common, b) world-changing and c) denied exclusively to solar fuels.

Let’s examine also the articles’s unattributed claim that the airline goal of halving the level of 2005 emissions by 2050 “would require around 170 large-scale biorefineries to be built every year between 2020 and 2050, at a cost of up to $60bn a year.”

Aviation used 71 billion gallons of fuel in 2005, globally. Even if aviation passenger levels doubled by 2050, and ALL of it was in the form of biofuels delivering a 70% reduction in CO2 compared to 2005 emissions, you’d need 2800 biorefineries.

Which would be 82 refineries per year, even if today’s rough average of 50 million gallons per jet biorefinery didn’t increase.

According to this chart, the aviation industry intends advanced jet biofuels to provide a 5% contribution to emissions reduction by 2030.

(Why? At 70% CO2 reduction levels, you’d generate the same emissions as 1.5 billion gallons of conventional fuel. That’s a 3.5 billion gallon reduction, or roughly 5% of 2005 convention emissions.)

How many refineries do you need? At today’s size, you need 100. So, one would have to build roughly 7 per year in the 14 years between now and 2030.

Let’s take you back to that “170 large-scale biofineries per year” claim. It’s bosh.

Which would be fine, except that virtually every aviation fuel spec is limited to 50% biofuels content. Meaning you can cut the carbon content in half, only. Max.

But why not drop the carbon reduction goal to something approaching technical reality. 40%? 35%? READ MORE and MORE (BBC; includes VIDEO)

Excerpt from BBC: ICAO believe they have found a way forward that would allow airlines to offset emissions in the future by purchasing credits from certified reduction schemes, such as tree planting.

But their long-term goal of halving the level of 2005 emissions by 2050 depends on a rapid uptake of green fuels.

"The US is the 800 pound gorilla of carbon pollution in the sky," said Vera Pardee a lawyer with the Centre for Biological Diversity.

"More than 30% of all international carbon pollution comes from the United States.

"It is the duty of the US to get us out of this problem. If the US Environmental Protection Agency were to adopt meaningful standards then the international community will follow.

"The airplane manufacturers are not stupid, they need to meet the demands of their markets, when a regulation goes into effect for one of their major markets, that will be the catalyst to cause emissions to finally be handled correctly and come down." READ MORE