by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) The International Energy Agency, through its Task 39 group, has published its 207-page report on the “Status of Advanced Biofuels Demonstration Facilities in 2012″.
The report, in its pages, contains detailed project summaries as well as summary tables that track the company, location, company, feedstocks, products, capacity, project type (e.g. pilot, demo, commercial) and status (operational, closed or planned).
…Task 39 is a group of international experts working to commercialize sustainable transportation biofuels. Bioenergy and biofuels are important components within a country’s green energy portfolio. While there are numerous renewable energy options for heat and electricity generation, biofuels are currently the only means of displacing liquid fossil fuels such as gasoline, diesel, and aviation fuels.
…Since the previous edition of this report (2010):
1. Hydrotreatment as pursued by e.g. Neste Oil has been commercialized and currently accounts for approximately 2.4% of biofuels production worldwide.
2. Fermentation of lignocellulosic raw material to ethanol has also seen a strong development and several large scale facilities are just coming online in Europe and North America.
3. As for thermochemical processes, the development is recently focusing on the production of mixed alcohols rather than BtL-Diesel. Economic reasons are driving this development, and concepts like the integration into existing industries and the production of several products instead of biofuel only (biorefinery concept) receive more attention lately.
4. Task 39 reports, “As expected, some of the projects for advanced biofuel production have failed. As a result, companies are now more careful in making announcements of advanced biofuels projects, and several large-scale projects have been postponed recently, some even though public funding would have been granted. READ MORE Download Report (includes interactive map)