ABLC buzzes about biofuels policy, Administration support, chemicals, and lignin

As ABLC opens, industry association executives rally the troops to fight the EPA’s slashed advanced biofuels targets, get pathway approvals faster, and to buzz about chemicals, chemicals, chemicals.

Also, the industry buzzed about a weird study on cellulosic biofuels emissions, and how much Administration bashing is a good idea.

In Washington, top bioeconomy trade groups predicted yesterday that the Renewable Fuel Standard would not be restructured in 2014 but expect that a bill could be brought early in 2015 — saying that if Republicans took control of the Senate that such a bill could be “among the very first things we see out of the new Congress.”

Advanced Ethanol Council executive director Brooke Coleman, BIO industrial & environmental section chief Brent Erickson, Advanced Biofuels Association president Mike McAdams, National Biodiesel Board policy head Anne Steckel and Re:chem Alliance chief advocate Corinne Young were the panelists in the opening session of ABLC, the annual bioeconomy leadership conference which continues through Wednesday with more than 100 speakers on the agenda on topics ranging from policy to finance and new technologies.

Erickson, Coleman, McAdams and Steckel all predicted that 2014 Renewable Fuel Standard targets, when finalized, would be higher than those proposed by the EPA late last year.

McAdams ablaze in ABLC speech

In a fiery address to delegates, McAdams said, “The left hand should coordinate with the right hand: when the Department of Energy spends almost a billion dollars to stand up the advanced biofuels industry and encourage the investment of more than $5 billion by private industry, and just as the technologies reach commercial viability and produced more than 3 billion ethanol-equivalent gallons last year, EPA cannot slash targets by huge percentages in one year and pull the rug from underneath almost every company in the field.”

McAdams called for an advanced biofuels target of 3.2 billion ethanol-equivalent gallons, pointing out that “we’re not talking about some kind of fairy-dust technology here – the industry actually produced 3.2 billion last year.”

Meanwhile, the NBB’s Steckel charted the rising production of biodiesel and renewable diesel since the RFS2 was established, noting that industry had met every production challenge and produced 1.8 billion wet gallons last year — including 266 million gallons of “drop-in”, infrastructure compatible renewable diesel — that reduced emissions by more than 50 percent compared to fossil fuels. In counting biodiesel and renewable diesel gallonage under the Renewable Fuel Standard, regulators credit 1.5 ethanol-equivalent gallons for every gallon of biodiesel and 1.7 ethanol-equivalent gallons for every gallon of renewable diesel, because those fuels have higher energy densities compared to ethanol.

Coleman explained that “last year, the White House saw something that it didn’t like, which was rising RIN prices, and they feared that it would lead to higher gas prices,” and said that the slashed EPA targets were the result of panic in the executive branch of the government. But he said that the RFS was working as Congress intended, and that when RIN prices rise, they encourage production.

Sapphire Energy VP for corporate affairs Tim Zenk added that “the RVO proposes to cut volume requirements for advanced biofuels by more then 40%. In contrast they propose a less than 10% reduction to volume requirements for conventional biofuels. It delivers a material blow to the category of fuels that will deliver the largest reductions in GHG emissions, are infrastructure compliant and are required by the Department of Defense.”

Erickson also pointed to long wait times for approval of pathways by EPA was slowing the introduction of cellulosic fuels — noting that the average cellulosic biofuels producer has to wait almost two years for an approval. Erickson also said that the extension of the advanced biofuels tax credit, Farm Bill energy title implemetation and a tex credit for renewable chemicals were priorities for the industry.

Biting the hand that feeds?

But one noted biofuels producer, LanzaTech CEO Jennifer Holmgren, stepped forward to defend the Administration.

“There’s been a lot of administration bashing. Every EPA ruling and in general support for advanced biofuels is being noted and picked apart. Even USDA was criticized, though the USDA has been the biggest supporter of biofuels due to the promise of jobs in rural communities. Yesterday’s it was mentioned that the Navy and USDA might limit feedstocks in the Defense Production Act project — but in such a negative light. The DPA requirement is a clever solution backed by tons of work, to deal with a request by the industry to bring capex to bear.”

A strange study appears out of Nebraska

In other ABLC buzz, delegates were aghast over a study published in Nature predicted that cellulosic biofuels made from corn stover would produce seven percent higher greenhouse gas emissions than conventional gasoline.

“The core analysis depicts an extreme scenario that no responsible farmer or business would ever employ” Jan Koninckx, global business director for biorefineries at DuPont, told the Associated Press in responding to the study. “It would ruin both the land and the long-term supply of feedstock. It makes no agronomic or business sense.”

Ironically, as Nature published it’s “no using lignin” report, Inbicon was on stage on ABLC’s opening morning touting its lignin strategy for advanced biofuels production.

The study’s lead author, University of Nebraska assistant professor of biological systems engineering Adam Liska, conceded that, in developing the scenario, he had not accounted for renewable power generation in his calculations. Up to 40 percent of cellulosic biomass is diverted to power generation in typical biofuels production technologies. In fact, cellulosic biofuels companies like INEOS Bio and Abengoa typically commence renewable power generation first, as their technologies are commissioned, several months before starting ethanol production.

Several observers told the Digest that the study also assumed — in the scenario quoted by the Associated Press — that farmers would remove all residue from their fields, thereby requiring soil carbon to be restored from external sources. No cellulosic biofuels technology is currently in existence or in development that would require such a level of carbon supply from growers.

“Look, you could create a study of stress tolerance,” an observer told the Digest, “and base it on how crops would perform if grown on the dark side of the moon, and the numbers would look bad, and it would be real data. But it wouldn’t be science, or scientific, because it would be based on a manufactured scenario that would never happen. And that’s what you have here. What farmer would remove all the carbon off his field? It’s absurd.”