U.S. renewable fuels market could face feedstock deficit

[Jean Boucher]

May be of interest - Jean  (link and embedded) 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-energy-feedstocks-graphic/u-s-renewable-fuels-market-could-face-feedstock-deficit-idUSKBN2BW0EO

APRIL 8, 202110:11 PMUPDATED 4 HOURS AGO

U.S. renewable fuels market could face feedstock deficit

By Stephanie Kelly

4 MIN READ

(Refiles to fix graphic links, no changes to text)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Demand for feedstocks from renewable fuel producers is expected to surge in the United States in coming years as companies scramble to expand output.

Energy from material that comes from plants and animals, or biomass, currently accounts for roughly 5% of U.S. energy use, slightly more than wind and solar energy. Most U.S. energy use is still based around fossil fuels like petroleum and natural gas.

The United States and other nations are attempting to reduce overall carbon emissions and cut use of high-polluting fossil fuels. Refiners, farmers and agricultural giants are hoping to gain a foothold in fuel supply through production of fuels made from biomass.

But biomass-based fuel production could face limits, as farmers need to harvest more soy and other products to meet growing demand, while companies that collect and process animal fats or spent cooking oil also would need to expand.

Fuels such as biodiesel, renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel draw from the same feedstock pool, and analysts have warned there might not be enough lower-carbon intensive feedstock to keep up.

GRAPHIC: Petroleum was the most used energy source in 2020

Demand for soybean oil alone is expected to far outstrip supply by 2023, according to a BMO Capital Markets report from October 2020. The financial services provider estimates an incremental demand of 8 billion pounds of soybean oil by 2023 because of an increase in renewable diesel production.

“The feedstock issue is going to be an enormous problem. Dealing with this matter is going to be hard,” said Robert Campbell, head of oil products research at Energy Aspects.

Renewable energy made up 9.11 quadrillion British thermal units, or 9.8%, of the total energy consumption in 2020, according to Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook. By 2024, that’s expected to grow to 12.23 quadrillion Btu, or 12.5%, of total energy consumption.

RENEWABLE PRODUCTION ON THE RISE

Biomass can make fuels such as renewable diesel, biodiesel, sustainable aviation fuel and ethanol.

Renewable diesel production capacity is expected to nearly quintuple to about 2.65 billion gallons (63 million barrels) by 2024, investment bank Goldman Sachs said in October. But that would require an additional 17 billion pounds of feedstock, creating friction between existing biodiesel and food customers, the report said.

The United States produced 533 million gallons of renewable diesel in 2020, according to a Reuters analysis of Environmental Protection Agency data.

U.S. biodiesel production is roughly 110,000 barrels per day, according to the Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook, dwarfed by oil refineries, which last year had an operable crude distillation capacity of around 19 million barrels per day, according to EIA.

GRAPHIC: Feedstock used to produce biofuels

While biodiesel requires around 7.5 pounds of feedstock per gallon, renewable diesel needs about 8.5 pounds per gallon, Goldman Sachs said. They estimate a 13-billion pound feedstock deficit by 2024 as more processing capacity starts up. Sustainable aviation fuel production will further increase demand for renewable feedstock.

Though other, lower-carbon intensive feedstocks like tallow and used cooking oil are gaining traction because of government incentives, producers still rely mostly on corn and soybeal oil to make biofuels.

GRAPHIC: Renewable diesel output vs. gasoline and crude output

Reporting by Stephanie Kelly; editing by Diane Craft

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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The task of a life is not to be good, but real. – Carl Jung

[Rees, William E.]

Unbridled insanity. 

 

Has no one done the math on the land requirements for biofuels production?  And what about  competition with food production?  I suppose if global market economics prevails (as it already is), the world will be nourishing it's biodiesel fleet before it feeds millions of people or worries about land conversion and plunging biodiversity.

The only safe way out of the energy crunch is to use less, not produce more ecologically disastrous fuels.  As always, on a world in overshoot, sustainable production and consumption is less production and consumption, fewer people using less stuff. 

Bill

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[Tom Abeles]

hi william

Yes! 

And there are other competitors: Green NH3 and H2 for both diesel and gas powered and EV's with both solid state and flow batteries

And there is the obvious: increased efficiencies and decreased needs for land (there is always Jevon with whom to contend

All this when thinking about the Breaksthrough Institute's analysis of being able to separate climate change from GDP. After all, aren't there figures of around 40% of food production going to waste. But then the devil is in the details?

Oh what a complex knot that those clever apes weave- those, who broke into the fossil fuel cookie jar and now are professing like Polonius and his form changing clouds- yea verily!

As was once said: when the lord created humans, a chance was taken. Intelligence may not be a survival characteristic

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[Rees, William E.]

Amen to all that!

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From: Tom Abeles <tab...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, April 9, 2021 5:34:50 PM
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Subject: Re: [SCORAI] U.S. renewable fuels market could face feedstock deficit

 

[Ruben Anderson]

Intelligence is quite widespread through the animal kingdom, something else is to blame. 

r.

[Rees, William E.]

But there is intelligence and there is intelligence, no?

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From: Ruben Anderson <anderso...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, April 9, 2021 8:08:00 PM
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Cc: Rees, William E.; SCORAI Group
Subject: Re: [SCORAI] U.S. renewable fuels market could face feedstock deficit

 

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[Jean Boucher]

I think I would tend away from a rational type intelligence (like "Gee, if people just knew better they would behave better!") and more toward the anthropological and symbolic worlds of meaning embedded in what's been identified on this list as the modern tech/industrial society (I forget the acronym, but there's also others). This modern society that's mostly fixated on extractive high energy-use and carbon intensive "group think"/status markers (like having the right stuff, car, house in suburbs--what I call the accoutrements of class) and all the nation-state apparti to garner resources, and all connected to a mob-ruling collective action problem. Anthony Gidden's (sociologist) used to talk about a juggernaut of modernity careening forward with little hope of steering the thing.

I'm not sure humans have ever lived outside of a collective meaning type world (I'm not an anthropologist), but now we just have the means toward super-production and consumption and it seems we're fixated on irrationally applying these means.

Yes, I think we need to start using our rational thinking skills (collectively) but we've gone so far afield (ala disconnected capitalist consumer life) that we need some super-powers and super-actors, and all along the social scale--micro, macro, meso.

Jean

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