This seems like predominately an argument against biofuels for electricity production, noting that land usage of alternative renewable sources are orders of magnitude better.
Aside from the reference of carbon intensity vs ethanol, it’s not obvious to me that this is an argument against biofuels for situations where electrification faces other challenges. For example, jet fuels. Do you have similar arguments against using biofuels for aviation? The metric for comparison there certainly isn’t hectares per TWh/yr.
Another area I’ve seen dedicated biomass discussed is as feedstock for carbon dioxide removal or BECSS, where the predominate benefit isn’t electricity production, but permanent removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
You forget the evolution bias! If the whole world is covered in agricultural areas; there wont be any industry, cities, or in general big power consumers either. By itself, that would not be a problem, but can you picture yourself eating corn for the rest of your days? Me neither.
I view biomass as a useful source of feedstock, not an energy source. Biofuels have very poor biomass carbon -> usable product carbon. Oxy fire gasify to make CO/CO2 the. Upgrade the syngas with clean H2, and can get on the order of 3-4x the product.
Gasified biomass is not picky about the source either, so scraps and waste is fine. And the same synthetic routes could use DAC CO2, so less lock in risk and/or feedstock source switch ability is inherent.
Agree that growing crops on land and processing into fuel is insane. Best case - grow algae, dry, and burn directly in thermal power plant for electricity. I believe this is the concept of one of the finalists in Musk’s carbon X-prize. Haven’t checked the numbers myself - probably should.
Ok i get this in general, but I'm curious about biofuel for jet fuel. Given that we have no good options on the table, how does this compare with our other bad options? Wondering if you guys found any of this in your research. Lufthansa tries to upsell all their customers the option to contribute to using biofuel for jets.
This seems like predominately an argument against biofuels for electricity production, noting that land usage of alternative renewable sources are orders of magnitude better.
Aside from the reference of carbon intensity vs ethanol, it’s not obvious to me that this is an argument against biofuels for situations where electrification faces other challenges. For example, jet fuels. Do you have similar arguments against using biofuels for aviation? The metric for comparison there certainly isn’t hectares per TWh/yr.
Another area I’ve seen dedicated biomass discussed is as feedstock for carbon dioxide removal or BECSS, where the predominate benefit isn’t electricity production, but permanent removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
"In some cou"
I think you've got an editing error there.
I'd point out that biofuels can have zero land use. Arguably one of the densest biofuel sources is neochloris oleoabundans, which is an algae.
You forget the evolution bias! If the whole world is covered in agricultural areas; there wont be any industry, cities, or in general big power consumers either. By itself, that would not be a problem, but can you picture yourself eating corn for the rest of your days? Me neither.
I view biomass as a useful source of feedstock, not an energy source. Biofuels have very poor biomass carbon -> usable product carbon. Oxy fire gasify to make CO/CO2 the. Upgrade the syngas with clean H2, and can get on the order of 3-4x the product.
Gasified biomass is not picky about the source either, so scraps and waste is fine. And the same synthetic routes could use DAC CO2, so less lock in risk and/or feedstock source switch ability is inherent.
Agree that growing crops on land and processing into fuel is insane. Best case - grow algae, dry, and burn directly in thermal power plant for electricity. I believe this is the concept of one of the finalists in Musk’s carbon X-prize. Haven’t checked the numbers myself - probably should.
Ok i get this in general, but I'm curious about biofuel for jet fuel. Given that we have no good options on the table, how does this compare with our other bad options? Wondering if you guys found any of this in your research. Lufthansa tries to upsell all their customers the option to contribute to using biofuel for jets.