Join every day information updates from CleanTechnica on e-mail. Or observe us on Google Information!
At the moment of on-line hyperventilating, it’s all the time — properly, let’s say principally — refreshing to dip into the CleanTechnica feedback for information, insights, and various views from our readers. A current story about biofuel is a living proof. On January 10 CleanTechnica posted a press launch from the Vitality Division, detailing a $1.67 billion mortgage assure to the agency Montana Renewables, geared toward rising home manufacturing of sustainable aviation gas. Besides, the press launch neglected one key element…
What Is The Feedstock For This So-Known as Sustainable Aviation Gasoline?
As of the morning of January 11, two of our readers needed to know what feedstocks are going into the corporate’s method for sustainable aviation gas. I learn the press launch, and I had the identical query, too.
“The mortgage assure will assist finance the enlargement of a renewable fuels facility in Nice Falls, Montana to produce sustainable aviation gas (SAF), renewable diesel, and renewable naphtha,” the press launch reads.
And, that’s nearly all they needed to say about that. “This challenge will make the most of vegetable oils, fat, and greases to provide sustainable fuels,” the Vitality Division added. That’s not a very useful degree of element given the appreciable controversy surrounding the usage of land to develop power crops.
The biofuel subject is starting to develop previous the food-vs-fuel debate by transferring the main focus to camelina and different non-food oilseed crops that may develop on marginal, non-food lands. Nonetheless, the prospect of mowing down forests, grasslands, and different biodiverse habitats to develop power crops just isn’t a sustainable answer.
A extra promising motion is afoot to replant derelict citrus plantations and different pre-stressed lands with new climate-hardy varieties that lend themselves to biofuel manufacturing in addition to meals and animal feed. Algae farming is one other potential pathway for avoiding habitat destruction, although vital obstacles stay in that subject. Neither of those choices is out there at scale right here and now, although.
Why Montana?
One among our readers recommended timber and pig manure as two bio-resources available within the state of Montana at scale for biofuel manufacturing. Native and regional sourcing is a key issue within the Montana Renewables enterprise mannequin, so let’s check out that.
It’s not my job to defend one firm or one other, or the Vitality Division, so what follows just isn’t a protection of Montana Renewables or the Vitality Division. As a time-saver for our readers, I went into the Montana Renewables web site and checked out among the elements that inspired the Vitality Division to supply the corporate with a $1.67 billion mortgage assure, conserving in thoughts that Montana Renewables needed to compete in opposition to different stakeholders for the mortgage, and that the company’s Mortgage Applications Workplace, which issued the mortgage, has established a stable observe document of due diligence (see extra LPO background right here).
- Montana Renewables already established competence within the SAF subject at scale.
- The corporate’s location within the state of Montana leverages vital native and regional US–Canadian biofuel sources, decreasing prices and emissions associated to transportation.
- The Montana location serves a focus of states and provinces within the northwest US and Canada which have enacted a Low Carbon Gasoline Commonplace, additionally contributing to transportation financial savings.
- Electrical energy for the Montana Renewables facility comes from hydroelectric energy vegetation.
“Our manufacturing facility in Nice Falls, Montana is strategically positioned near main rail networks and worldwide airports all through the western United States and Canada. This strategic location considerably decreases the carbon emissions in addition to transportation prices of SAF to product off-takers,” Montana Renewables emphasizes.
Moreover, the Mortgage Applications Workplace issued the mortgage via its Vitality Infrastructure Reinvestment department, via which it provides a recent begin to outdated or inoperable present power infrastructure. “This challenge will convert a portion of an oil refinery to provide renewable fuels. The challenge will even scale back the carbon depth of steam manufacturing and consumption within the neighboring oil refinery,” the Vitality Division notes.
What Are The Feedstocks?
As for the feedstocks of its varied biofuels, Montana Renewables does supply a bit extra element on its web site. Once more, what follows is a time-saver for our readers, not a critique of the corporate’s biofuel enterprise or its sourcing:
- Canola oil: “Canola oil is a sexy feedstock for biodiesel manufacturing as a result of it has a excessive yield per acre and a low degree of saturated fatty acids, which might trigger excessive viscosity within the last biodiesel product.”
- Tallow: “A byproduct of the meat manufacturing trade, tallow is obtained from rendering the fatty tissues of cattle, pigs, and different livestock.”
- Distillers’ Corn Oil (DCO): “Corn oil is extracted from the distillers’ dried grains with solubles (DDGS), a high-protein byproduct of the ethanol manufacturing course of, and has related properties to different vegetable oils, resembling canola and soybean oil.”
- Camelina Oil: “Camelina…is a fast-growing, drought-resistant oilseed crop that’s well-suited to cultivation in areas with difficult climates and soils.”
Past Biofuels To Sustainable Air Journey
Among the many readers commenting on the Montana Renewables press launch to this point, most went past the biofuel feedstock query to focus consideration on long run sustainability options. Listed here are a few of them with my feedback in parentheses:
- Make airline journey so costly that demand drops by half (as a corollary, make rail and bus mass transit inexpensive and extra handy).
- Produce sustainable aviation fuels from daylight and air-captured carbon dioxide as a substitute of vegetation (the electrofuels trade is starting to gear up, however prices are excessive).
- Use hydrogen gas as a substitute of kerosene (the aviation trade is engaged on that angle, considered one of many issues being the impacts of a rise in water vapor from hydrogen combustion).
Along with these options, the aviation trade is starting to introduce battery electrical plane and hydrogen gas cell plane.
Nonetheless, the main attraction of the SAF biofuel answer is the flexibility to drop in an alternate liquid gas with out having to interchange your entire gas supply infrastructure and plane specs, making it a close to time period answer if not a long run one.
Subsequent Steps For Renewables
It stays to be seen if the $1.67 billion mortgage assure for Montana Renewables makes it via the incoming Trump administration’s recreation of budgetary whack-a-mole that’s already brewing.
Chances are high that the Trump budget-cutters must search one other goal, although. On January 10 the Montana Renewables father or mother firm Calumet introduced the closing of a $1.44 assured Vitality Division mortgage facility, enabling development to transfer ahead on the brand new biofuel challenge. A mortgage facility permits a borrower to conduct a collection of transactions with out having to undergo a cumbersome re-application every time (the remaining $233 million of the $1.67 billion mortgage consists of capitalized curiosity).
“That is basically the biggest agricultural funding in Montana historical past and can double our purchases of seed oils and tallow from roughly 1.5 billion kilos per 12 months at the moment to three billion kilos per 12 months submit enlargement,” enthused Montana Renewables CEO Bruce Fleming.
That feels like a bonanza for native and regional farmers and ranchers. Certainly the Trump administration will do something it will possibly do to keep away from hurting farmers and ranchers, proper? Oh … on second thought….
For emails use this: Social media hyperlinks and creator archives through LinkTree, or @tinamcasey on Threads, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
Picture (cropped): Montana Renewables is planning to broaden their sustainable aviation gas footprint with an help from the US Division of Vitality (courtesy of Montana Renewables).
Chip in just a few {dollars} a month to assist assist impartial cleantech protection that helps to speed up the cleantech revolution!
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Wish to promote? Wish to counsel a visitor for our CleanTech Speak podcast? Contact us right here.
Join our every day publication for 15 new cleantech tales a day. Or join our weekly one if every day is simply too frequent.
CleanTechnica makes use of affiliate hyperlinks. See our coverage right here.
CleanTechnica’s Remark Coverage