Tag Archives: biodiesel vs ethanol

Autopsy of the NC Biofuels Center

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Almost a year old now,  I recently ran across an article that talked about the GOP’s funding retraction for the NC Biofuels Center and how it was politically motivated.   The article can be read in full at http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060003013.  I don’t know much about eenews.net, but the article reads very bent towards the political left, and didn’t really have any weigh in from the Republicans or any real mention of mitigating factors that may have contributed to the Center’s demise.

From a North Carolina biodiesel producer’s perspective, I have a few thoughts on the matter.   I met with the leadership of the Biofuels Center many times.  They came and visited my plant in 2011.   There are 5 biodiesel plants in North Carolina, and that year was the year we became the largest producer in the state.  I liked them instantly as they were very respectful and friendly.   They were not, however, very well educated on biodiesel or how it is produced.  I expected more I guess, being they were from the “Biofuels Center”.   I got multiple questions about fermentation, distillation, or similar ethanol type biofuel questions which had no application in my plant.  They were eager to learn, but I felt they should have come more prepared (and apparently I wasn’t the first biodiesel plant they had visited that week).

And that summed up in a nutshell the focus of the Biofuels Center (BC):  They were focused almost entirely on ethanol and ethanol based crop research.  The goal set by North Carolina was lofty:  “By 2017, 10 percent of liquid fuels sold in North Carolina will come from biofuels grown and produced within the State.”   Almost none of that, apparently, was envisioned as coming from the five biodiesel plants that already existed in North Carolina.   Logistically that made some sense, in that they needed at least a few very large biofuels plants in NC to be able to meet such a lofty goal as was set.  I know at least 3 of the 5 biodiesel plants (including TBI) would have happily accepted ANY incentives to expand our plants to meet the goal.  But the BC wanted ethanol.

Triangle Biofuels never got any financial support from the Biofuels Center, even though we contacted them and applied several times.  Where they did provide financial support, grants, or research assistance is well documented, but as far as I know there were no major allocation of funds ($250,000 to Blue Ridge Biofuels is the largest and only real grant I’m aware of) provided to any of the existing biodiesel plants for expansion to help meet the 10% goal set by the State.   To be fair, the $250,000 award to Blue Ridge is a sizable award by most biodiesel plant measures, but comparatively it was too small.  Much of the awards went to municipalities or research programs for university programs.   Their failures are also well documented, such as “Clean Burn” (see featured image above) in Raeford, NC, which received millions in funding and incentives but went bankrupt before it ever produced any ethanol.  Needless to say, it’s 2015 and we will come nowhere close to meeting that goal in 2017.  Most likely, it never really had a chance to begin with.

Lyle Estill of Piedmont Biofuels said this in the article:  “Looking back on the center, Estill said that its leaders would sometimes ‘impose petroleum thinking on the biofuels endeavor.’ In other words, the center aimed for big projects that require massive quantities of feedstock.”  Lyle and I often don’t see eye to eye, but I respect his expertise and passion for biodiesel as a fuel, and his perspective on this issue is dead on in my opinion.  He too wanted to see the smaller plants receive funding to help them grow, and possibly spark additional plants into production.  That, of course, never happened.

The idea of the Biofuels Center was a fantastic one; it was noble, and it was timely.  The people that worked there were ambitious, talented, and passionate.  Their execution however, was flawed and misguided.

Factor in the budget constraints that most states were operating under, the lack of any significant substantive accomplishments by the Biofuels Center towards the goal set for 2017, the low ROI on funds allocated to the center, and it isn’t difficult to understand the Legislature’s decision to stop funding the center.

 

EPA RFS2 Blunder

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From domesticfuel.com:

A YouTube video of EPA official Margo Oge testifying before a House panel in May reveals her providing radically incorrect information about the amount of corn and soybeans it takes to make biofuels.

The blunder occurred when Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL) asked Ms. Oge, who is responsible for regulating all emissions within the United States, about the indirect land use issue. “It’s my understanding that the EPA’s Renewable Fuels Standard 2 methodology assumes that for every acre of soybean crop that is used to produce biofuel, an equal acre of ground is used in the Brazilian rainforest to replace that acreage, is that correct?” asked Schock.

“Obviously we know that it takes about 64 acres for a gallon of soy biodiesel,” she begins, and then corrects herself, even more incorrectly. “It’s actually the opposite. It takes 64 acres for corn ethanol and over 400 acres for a gallon of biodiesel.”

Actually, one acre of soybeans makes 64 gallons of biodiesel and one acre of corn makes over 400 gallons of ethanol. This may have been just a simple mistake – or maybe she really doesn’t know – but it is now possible that members of the U.S. House Small Business Committee believe that it takes a huge amount of corn and soybeans to produce biofuels because that is what she told them.

The YouTube video with commentary was posted anonymously by an account called “FreedomIs1st” and no one in the biofuels industry has taken credit for it – but it is very good and should be shared. In fact, it might be good for people in the industry to write to their congressional representatives, especially if they are on the House Small Business committee, to make sure they have the facts.