It Rhymes with Calf: Reflections and re-cap from ABLC Next 2022

ABLC was a happy pandemonium, with 780 high-level delegates stuffed into the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco, let there be no doubt about it. The din of companies seeking partners, building visibility was louder than I think I have ever heard at a conference before. 

If you’ve read your Milton, you’ll know that Pandemonium was styled the capital of Hell in Paradise Lost, but let me lean into my classicist roots and to the more literal meaning of the phrase, which is “all the little angels”. If there were a place where little angels sought to become big angels, and do great works with renewables provided by the Almighty, it was ABLC.

Adding it up, I expect that something like 10 million words were spoken on the conference floor by the delegates. Yet, we like our summaries to be in the 100 word range for the sake of simplicity and recall, and I have been struggling to summarize all the ABLC verbiage into a few sentence or two. An inspiration arrived just now, as we move from October to November, from the frolic of Hallowe’en to the joy of the Advent season. One of my favorite Advent hymns, You Will See the Lord a-Coming, came to mind, and inspires me to sum up ABLC and all the SAF rapture as follows:

You will see the SAF a-coming 
You will see the SAF a-coming 
You will see the SAF a-coming 
In a few more days

Then we’ll shout our suffering’s over
Then we’ll shout our suffering’s over
Then we’ll shout our suffering’s over
In a few more days

SAF isn’t quite here yet in the volumes required — that’s a mild, psalm-singin’ way of puttin’ it, for an industry which needs to replace 100 billions gallons annually of petroleum-based fuel, and is producing something less than 20 million gallons right now. Yet, great things have humble origins. Even those who support SAF may well be thinking “in the sweet by and by” works better than the urgency of the Adventists that seemed to spread across the ABLC floor. Meanwhile, pessimists lurk in the shadows.

Amen to all that

The Pessimistos point to: low carbon prices, lack of ambition in actual Low Carbon Fuel Standard targets, the slow establishment of carbon markets, the high cost of technology, the paucity of established feedstocks, the parity of renewable diesel and SAF, weak airline balance sheets, consumers who want salvation on the cheap, cowardly financial institutions, the short-term focus of just about everyone, and so on and so forth. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

We used to have in corporate circles an “Amen” rule, when everything had been said, but not everyone had had a chance to say it. You could say “amen” to close the repetitive comments of the flogging-a-dead-horse type. So, let me put it this way: amen to the naysayers, amen to the climate deniers, amen to those who point to the swamps and thickets and cry “Peril” when I cry “Feedstocks!. The risks and terrors are real, but amen to all that, we’ve heard the same old cry too many times now.

Into the Red Zone

The world has discovered all the simple plays and easy yards in its journey to Net Zero.

Yes, coal to gas! Yes, EVs! Yes, solar and wind! Yes, we are marching to the 20-yard line!

Soon, we will be in the Red Zone, the hardest yards of decarbonization are nigh upon us, and that is the Bioeconomy Zone, the only energy platform that can realize a Carbon Intensity number that drops below zero. 

We have lost some of the political leadership of John F. Kennedy who said “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win.” Amen to all that too.  

To reach our goal we might be running the “Two-Minute Offense”, but we are not the first to need to move quickly, nor the last. We have a great hurry because we have a great purpose. That is the message of ABLC, more or less. There might be an awful lot of postponements in the bioeconomy and perhaps that’s why the phrase ‘You will see the SAF a-coming…In a few more days” comes to mind, because we’ve heard the “hymns to string you along by” a few times before. As was said to the MIllerites who once predicted October 28, 1844 as the date of the Second Coming, the date is less certain than the outcome. 

I read this passage again recently, from the Book of Matthew:

“Now learn this parable from the fig tree: When its branch has already become tender and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near. So you also, when you see all these things, know that it is near—at the doors! Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place.”

SAF at the head of the host

At ABLC, we heard of feedstocks and finance, and advanced ethanol, renewable diesel, rDME, vegan foods, biogas and RNG, hydrogen, renewable chemicals and materials, so much that is good, so much that is here, so much more coming. But it would not be unfair to the others to point to the joys and terror of a 3 billion gallon Biden Administration SAF target for 2030 and declare that “this was the big news,” this is the grand challenge, as the Department of Energy puts it, and say that no matter what ABLC NEXT is remembered for, it was the SAF-singers who got the greatest cheers. 

“I’m having SAF, SAF, SAF, SAF, SAF, baked beans, SAF, SAF, and SAF”, as the Monty Python troupe almost but not quite put it in the Spam sketch. Let us not deny them their joy, the SAFfers, and when reach their goals,“then we’ll shout our suffering’s over,” all of us together. Maybe some of the enthusiasm for near-term targets will fade, maybe our sufferin’ won’t be exactly over in a few more days. Maybe less on dates and more on outcomes.

The Digest will have a few more words on feedstock, technology and goals over the next few days as we continue to re-cap ABLC — but let us be clear: The bulls weren’t running in San Francisco, they were flying. It was SAF Francisco. Skeptics might take a lesson from the Due Diligence Wolfpack and found their skepticism upon hard data rather than tired canards like “food vs fuel” and so forth.  Optimism, or you might call it SAFfism, has routed the enemy and the naysayers have fled the field, for now.