by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Is the US government right in aiming to commercialize aviation biofuels production – or should it be aimed at ensuring affordable feedstock?
Pain at the pump. $5 gasoline in California. $8 gasoline in the EU. We hear about it all the time. But in biofuels, the pain comes long before the pump. It arrives with the plant.
Pain? Try chatting with biofuels producers about the joys of $8 corn, $0.48 per pound soybean oil, $0.35 per pound waste greases and $0.20 per pound sugar prices.
Frankly, were we to have prices at half these levels, as were common, say, five years ago, there would be a lot more biofuels and a lot more excitement in financial circles about investing in biofuels.
…Our suggestion: it would be better to finance a wave of affordable feedstock capacity. If you build that, we have little doubt that based on the downstream demand in aviation, and the history of financing in biofuels that the production capacity would be built.
Back in the 1910s, the Navy and US government recognized this. Teapot Dome Oil Field, in Natrona County, Wyoming, the Elk Hills and Buena Vista Oil Fields in Kern County, California were designated as Naval Oil Reserves by President Taft.
What was notable is that the Navy didn’t focus on financing or developing fuel refining infrastructure – they focused on a reserve of feedstock. The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve is not the US Strategic Jet Fuel Reserve, either.
Feedstock first: It was a wise move then and would be a wise move now.
…To advance aviation biofuels – both for military energy security purposes, and to give US airlines access to affordable, low-carbon fuels – why not designate a Naval Agricultural Reserve? As with the original programs in Wyoming and California – production of feedstock from this resource would be reserved for military and aviation use. READ MORE
