Guest “Do they intentionally get the headlines wrong?” by David Middleton
MARCH 24, 2022
EIA projects U.S. renewable diesel supply to surpass biodiesel in AEO2022In our Annual Energy Outlook 2022 (AEO2022) Reference case, which reflects current laws and regulations, we project that renewable diesel supply (domestic production and net imports) will exceed biodiesel supply in the near term. We project that renewable diesel supply will increase to 130,000 barrels per day (b/d) in 2022 and 145,000 b/d in 2050, reflecting a significant increase in renewable diesel production capacity in the near term.
Biomass-based diesel fuels include biodiesel and renewable diesel, both of which are refined from the same types of fat, oil, and grease feedstocks. Renewable diesel is chemically indistinguishable from petroleum diesel (known as a drop-in diesel fuel), meaning that it meets specifications for use in existing infrastructure and diesel engines and is not subject to any blending limitations. Biodiesel is a mixture of chemical compounds known as alkyl esters and is often combined with petroleum diesel in blends of 5% to 20%, known as B5 to B20, respectively.
We project that production of renewable diesel supply will grow because of its compatibility with existing distribution infrastructure and engines, higher state and federal targets for renewable fuel production, incentives from tax credits, and the conversion of existing petroleum refineries into renewable diesel refineries.
Targets and incentives that contribute to renewable diesel’s growth include the Renewable Fuel Standard, California’s Low-Carbon Fuel Standard, and the U.S. biomass-based diesel blender credit, which currently applies through 2022 and allows qualified taxpayers to claim a credit of $1.00/gallon when the required amount of biodiesel or renewable diesel is blended with petroleum diesel for sale or use in a trade or business. In response to the improved economics of renewable diesel due to these policy actions, domestic production capacity has increased, both in the form of new stand-alone facilities and converted petroleum refineries.
We assume that policies, rather than market demand, drive the adoption of biomass-based diesel fuels in the AEO2022 Reference case. Renewable diesel and biodiesel compete for the same feedstocks, so some of the projected growth in renewable diesel production displaces biodiesel production. We project these two fuels will remain a relatively small part of the larger diesel market, accounting for less than 8% of the U.S. diesel production in 2050.
Principal contributors: Estella Shi, Will Sommer, Andrew Smiddy
Tags: production/supply, AEO (Annual Energy Outlook), forecasts/projections, renewables, liquid fuels, diesel, biofuels
EIA
The EIA features this graph at the beginning of the article…
And then, near the bottom of the article, they tossed in this graph…
Shouldn’t the headline have been more like this?
EIA projects U.S. biomass-based diesel fuels to remain less than 8% of total diesel supply in AEO2022
Or maybe this should have been the headline:
Policies, rather than market demand, drive the adoption of biomass-based diesel fuels in the AEO2022 Reference case… Explaining lack of demand growth
This bit is fracking hilarious:
Renewable diesel is chemically indistinguishable from petroleum diesel…
Diesel from recently dead plants is good for the climate… Diesel from long-dead algae & plankton is bad for the climate… Yet the good diesel is “chemically indistinguishable from” the bad diesel.
Yes… As a petroleum geologist, I fully realize that petroleum diesel moves carbon from the geological (slow) carbon cycle back into the active (fast) carbon cycle. Whereas, renewable diesel “recycles” carbon that’s already in the active cycle. That said…
Renewable Diesel Evaluation in UPS Fleet Vehicles
[…]
Results
Results indicate that, on average, renewable diesel reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 4.2% compared to petroleum diesel.[…]
NREL 2018
I don’t want to sound cynical… But a 4.2% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions seems like it would be in the margin of error. At the very least, it doesn’t sound significant.
Carbon dioxide emissions
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that in 2020, diesel (distillate) fuel consumption in the U.S. transportation sector resulted in the emission of about 432 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas. This amount was equal to about 26% of total U.S. transportation sector CO2 emissions and equal to about 9% of total U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions in 2020.
Last updated: December 2, 2021
EIA
OK… Diesel fuel consumption accounts for “about 9% of total U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions”. If we replaced all of the petroleum diesel with renewable diesel, it would reduce CO2 emissions by about 4%… 96% of 9% is still 9% (8.64%). 96% of 432 million metric tons is 415 metric tons. The maximum effect that renewable diesel could possibly have is an insignificant effect.
“The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades”
Renewable diesel: Frontier fuel with a future?
NOVEMBER 12, 2020Once upon a time in the West
Living on the West Coast of the United States and working in energy does not always go hand-in-hand. I’ve had enough 4 a.m. meetings with my colleagues in Houston to realize that. It can, however, provide you with a preview of the direction that the global energy industry and energy consumers are traveling.[…]
How the West was won
So why is this taking off in California? The short answer is incentives. The long answer is three complementary sets of incentives. Renewable diesel is eligible for Federal Renewable Fuels Standards (RFS), Californian Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) and Blenders Tax Credit (BTC) subsidies. These subsidies alone currently cover the fuel production costs meaning that early movers in this space are seeing profit margins of up to 45 percent.1 Numbers the oil and gas market could only dream of in today’s market.
[…]
Accenture Energy
Funny, I don’t recall anyone whining about “windfall profits” of renewable diesel companies back in 2020, despite the fact that government subsidies covered their “fuel production costs”.
Well, that bright future sure didn’t last long.
US renewable diesel production faces headwinds from high feedstock costs
11 Aug 2021
Author Janet McGurty
Editor Jim Levesque
Commodity Agriculture, Electric Power, OilThe growing popularity of repurposing or building renewable diesel facilities by US refiners and others seems to have hit a roadblock, as growing demand for feedstock is pressuring supply and price.
CVR Energy has decided, for the time being, to keep the hydrocracker at its Wynnewood, Oklahoma, refinery in “oil service” rather than take the unit down to complete the renewable diesel conversion process because of the high cost of renewable diesel feedstocks, CEO Dave Lamp said Aug. 3.
“Renewable diesel feedstock prices have increased considerably, particularly for refined, bleached and deodorized soybean oil, to a level where economics do not make sense for us to complete the conversion at this time,” he said.
[…]
S&P Global, Commodity Insights
And those headwinds of 2021, keep getting stronger…
Nasdaq
Why aren’t the Democrats clamoring for a soybean oil “windfall profits tax”? I guess they’re busy with even dumber ideas: Lawmakers propose $100 ‘energy rebate’ stimulus checks to offset high gas prices
EIA AEO2022 projects that, market demand, despite policies, will continue to drive this: Petroleum and natural gas are the most-used fuels in the United States through 2050…
Note: Biofuels are both shown separately and are included in petroleum and other liquids.
As it turns out…
Like ethanol and wind, biodiesel is a subsidy mining operation. Not viable as an exercise otherwise.
Where are the biodiesel school buses pushed on schools by certain congressmen (D) and more recently electric school buses?
Tom, as said here many times before, ethanol up to the 10% blendwall is NOT subsidy mining. It replaced groundwater polluting MBTE as an octane enhancer, enabling more useful gas gallons per barrel of crude. It has the added benefit of being a smog reducing oxygenate. The Blendwall of 10% was set by LA premium gas in summer. That is why pumps say up to 10%. Depends on gas octane, season of year, and location.
And the supposed impact on food prices is deminimus. It is true that about 40% of the US corn crop (by ‘dry’ weight ~7% moisture) goes to ethanol. But ethanol returns about 27% by ‘dry’ weight of distillers grain (protein enhanced from the yeast roughage), which is an ideal ruminant feed supplement to alfalfa. MUCH better than the raw crushed corn and green corn whole chopped plant fermented silage (those big tall blue Harvestors) that we used to use on my SW Wisconsin dairy farm (combined operation about 350 head, about half milking twice/day). We switched around 2005. Don’t cut near as much green corn silage. Sell all harvested corn, buy back distillers grain from ‘local’ ethanol distilleries. Allowed us to alter crop rotations on all our contours (operation is combined 400 acres in the Uplands). Plant less alfalfa since we can sub distillers grain, plant more corn. And less alfalfa means more no-till so better net soil conservation. All good, no bad.
Allow more aromatics in gasoline and no octane enhancers are needed. I used to work for an oil company (rhymes with hell) that was heavily invested in reforming technology. It was a piece of cake to get high octane gas with a 5% benzene and 10% toluene blend.
Catalytic converters and modern emission controls make oxygenates obsolete basically. The concern is that there is the potential for fugitive benzene emissions, but these are readily engineered away.,
RIP Wilmington Mfg Complex
Been to them all.
My favorite was Anacortes . Eagles routinely circled the tallest units in the refinery with occasional visits from deer. Martinez wasn’t bad down by the pier.
My recollection is that whenever I drove by Martinez there was a bad odor.
It wasn’t me, but I admit that I like the smell of SJV crude.
With modern engines, oxygenating agents in the fuel aren’t needed.
Ethanol, while an OK oxygenate has several major drawbacks. First, it is hygroscopic, leading to water problems in gasoline. The red gel you find in your lawn mower carburetor after storing for the winter is a practical example of this defect.
Second, and most importantly, ethanol cannot be pipelined and stored with gasoline, and must be blended immediately prior to distribution of the finished product. This alone causes major inefficiency in the process.
A better alternative oxygenate would be n-butanol, which can be stored with the gasoline feedstock, is not hygroscopic, and does not depress the energy content of finished gasoline as much as ethanol.
Problem is, n-butanol is most economically made from crude oil, so does not have the subsidy mining potential of ethanol.
We really need to stop mandating the use of food to make gasoline.
There may be some incentive for that if the war in Ukraine results in worldwide food shortages this Fall.
Clyde, you would be right if we were not dealing with the leftists in the US congress.
There is no way they will remove all the subsidies for ethanol production.
The US was once he bread basket of the world, shipping wheat to the USSR and elsewhere around the world.
I wonder if the growth of USSR/Russian and Ukrainian wheat production parallels the growth of ethanol mandates and corn subsidies in the US?
“…as said here many times before, ethanol up to the 10% blendwall is NOT subsidy mining. “
So, why the RFS mandates?
I would totally disagree with EtOH being a “Smog Reducing Oxygenate”. The reason for adding “oxygen” to fuel was to increase the Air/Fuel ratio by reducing the “fuel” side of the equation. This was totally due to the desire to reduce CO emissions which come from incomplete combustion of fuel in CARBURETOR engines. With the advent of fuel injection and feedback control systems, there is no need to add “oxygenates” to fuel as the engine control system automatically adjusts A/F ratio based on oxygen sensor measurements. Even the University of Riverside which runs the development of emissions testing for CARB said, there is no benefit for oxygenated fuel anymore. Especially with the highly active Catalysts and Traps used in modern vehicles that control emissions so well that the exhaust from a car or diesel truck is now cleaner than the ambient air in the LA basin. This per California Energy Commission emissions engineers.
So the need for oxygenated fuels is totally bogus and incredibly outdated. In fact, adding EtOH to fuel increases the RVP of the fuel requiring that the gasoline blend component of the fuel contain LESS light compounds than typical raw conventional gasoline would contain. These pentanes are stored in railroad cars over summer until they can be blended into winter gasoline or used for other purposes. A total waste of effort for no benefit to society other than keeping politicians from having to admit that oxygenates, especially Ethanol, are totally pointless fuel blend components.
There is much more on this subject, but you get the jist.
Great post, and all your points are dead on. I have experience developing an oxygenate substitute for MTBE. It worked well, and even improved octane slightly. It just wasn’t ready for prime time.
On the other hand, pure ethanol as a fuel has one remarkable feature. Despite its lower volumetric and specific energy content, it can actually deliver higher mileage on a volumetric basis than gasoline. The “trick” follows from the fact that pure ethanol has a much higher octane rating than gasoline, which means that engines using pure EtOH can have much higher compression ratios than gasoline engines.
There’s no way to mix the two. You either have a pure EtOH engine, or a gasoline engine (which might be able to handle a slight ethanol blend).
There’s also no way that I know of to produce ethanol economically as a fuel. Even if “cellulosic” ethanol ever became a reality, it would never be able to run our transportation industry.
Finally, I think it would be a disaster socially to try pure EtOH as a fuel. I had a professor in my first year of engineering school who had been in the Polish navy prior to WWII. He berated us students as being softies (he used a different term), citing the fact that he and his comrades would drink pure torpedo fuel (pure ethanol) all night, then get up in the morning and get PhDs without any problem. I’m sure there was a lesson in there somewhere. But I can just see the problem emerging of pure EtOH consumption by the great unwashed masses…
Did the Polish navy have any ships other than submarines?
My reading says the ethanol lobby is pushing for mandated 20% blends — so they will have an even larger captive, no choice market.
Further reading says that above 10% will greatly reduce the life span of today’s engines, but then a well calculated, quite limited lifespan, really helps the engine manufacturers too. The peons should not have a choice in how they serve.
Hi Rud, I enjoy your posts because I learn from you – much appreciated!
I’m not a fan of fuel ethanol from corn. I “inherited” a corn ethanol plant in Wyoming in the 1990’s. It was well-run, had huge state and federal subsidies but only broke even – it was probably too small for economies of scale. Others have discussed the ups and downs of ethanol in gasoline engines – one more point is lower mileage with ethanol.
One of my concerns is environmental – corn, as I recall, takes a lot of water and fertilizer and the USA is short on water – the Great Plains / Ogallala aquifer is declining steeply in places. Corn ethanol for fuel is a costly farm subsidy that never made sense to me.
My friend Joe D’Aleo and I are watching the world food situation – the cold Nino34 SST’s predict a cold, wet Spring and Summer on the Great Plains and elsewhere, Ukraine may not get planted, Russia may be constrained, flooding in China, cold in the South America, India and China, all negative. There is much I do not know about this complex situation, and the USDA shows no concern to date. There was a huge crop failure on the Great Plains in 2019 in similar conditions, but prices remained stable due to good crops elsewhere and plenty of grain in storage.
One hypothetical question: Would it be practical to reduce corn-for-ethanol crops in the USA and shift substantial Spring 2022 planting to corn species suitable for human consumption? Is there enough seed corn available? What other practical obstacles exist? I doubt this would happen even if needed, since politicians tend to move “at the speed of dark”.
Regards, Allan
Rud, minor nit, it’s “MTBE,” methyl tert-butyl ether, not “MBTE”.
The bad is at least 2-fold. Ethanol added to fuel ruins older engines because it is hygroscopic therefore corroding most metals over time, and very few synthetic rubber products used in seals can tolerate alcohol. Plus, it gives lower fuel mileage. I speak from experience, because I restore vintage engines. I would say that its only benefit is for the rent-seekers.
Rud, you might be right, although I doubt it. The most efficient way to find out would be to drop the rules requiring ethanol and establish sensible rules on what should be coming out of the tailpipes and chimneys. Then let the markets decide what the real answer is to the problem.
If that were done, I seriously doubt that anywhere near the amount of corn going to ethanol production would continue. And, if true, the economy would be more productive.
By the way, Republicans are about as likely to vote for ethanol usage as Democrats if they represent farm states.
What would you call Hydrogen propulsion in commercial aircraft?
https://news.delta.com/decarbonized-future-flight-delta-and-airbus-collaborate-pull-forward-future-hydrogen-fuel
The return of the Hindenburg?
“What would you call Hydrogen propulsion in commercial aircraft?”
I’d call it “BOOM!!!”
Mr. Middleton,
I saw that EIA “Today In Energy” piece this morning and thought it was completely bogus.
You’ve outdone yourself this time.
Bravo! Well done you!
★★★★★★
There’s wrong, and then there’s EIA wrong.
It’s not so much wrong, as it is like being a NY Mets fan and celebrating every time they don’t finish in last place.
Can someone help me out with this whole subsidy thing? Every example I have heard about involves cronyism in one form or another. I’m leaning more and more to the idea that subsidies should be outlawed. Are there any examples of subsidies being a positive thing for all of us and not just a select few?
The Percentage Depletion Allowance can sort of be a subsidy under certain conditions..
https://nswa.us/percentage-depletion/
David, the Percentage Depletion Allowance looks to me to be a tax program. I can see tax incentives and subsidies accomplishing nearly the same thing but I thought subsidies were more like money giveaways rather than a break in the amount of tax you owe. I have asked before if anyone on the site could clearly lay out the difference between tax incentives and subsidies. I clearly don’t understand them.
The government considers so-called “tax expenditures” to be subsidies.
The depletion allowance enables oil & gas companies to write off the cost of developing an asset as it diminishes in value over time.
Smaller, independent oil companies and royalty owners are allowed to use percentage depletion, which sometimes allows them to write off more than what it actually cost them to develop the asset. This “subsidy” keeps a helluva lot of marginal domestic oil & gas production going and results in lower oil & gas prices.
To the extent that it is a subsidy, it does work.
If you were walking down the street, and a big guy came up to you with a gun in his hand and said “Give me $20 dollars”, then paused, and said, “You know, forget it, I don’t want it” and walked away. Did this big guy just “give you” $20?
Surprisingly, he might have. If you had borrowed $20 from him a week ago, promising to repay it in a couple of days, but then reneged…then, yes, if he didn’t take $20 from you, he gave you $20. It was his originally. He loaned it to you, and then allowed you to keep it rather than repay it. So he gave it to you.
Ted Kennedy coined the phrase “tax expenditure” to describe what he considered the relationship between the government and its “subjects” (as he regarded us). A “tax expenditure”, in his world, represented any money the government “spent” by not taking it away from the citizen. From my “big guy” example, one can see that this concept involves a premise that neither Kennedy nor any other member of the ruling class would dare state: the government is the owner of all wealth, period. This implies that the government has first claim on any and all money we earn, up to the entirety of our earnings. Any money the government doesn’t take from us is a gift, an “expenditure.”
In stark terms, this means that the government regards us as slaves. It has an absolute first claim on everything we produce, and considers everything it doesn’t take as a gift (or “subsidy”) to us.
I reject that premise.
Local governments OWN all of the land in “private” hands.
Property owners must pay an annual rent to the government. This rent is called “property taxes”
So we are slaves beholding to the land lords of government.
Ted Kennedy was a loathsome bottom feeder.
Thanks David for your reply. I always thought tax incentives and subsidies as two different programs. That is not to say that there can’t be overlap. Here is my problem, I believe that most if not all wind and solar projects are not feasible without subsidies. Subsidies can take many forms such as grants, loans, guaranteed purchase and god knows what else. The point is tax incentives mean people keep a portion of their own money, subsidies mean people are given my money. That’s a big difference. I don’t think we should allow people conflate one with the other.
I found this article while searching for the difference, the way this guy explains the difference seems more in line with how I was thinking. .
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3550268.pdf
https://uca.edu/acre/2016/08/19/tax-incentives-and-subsidies-two-staples-of-economic-development/
I posted the wrong site above, this is what I meant to post.
Nope.
Nope to what?
Special tax incentives are a subsidy. Mandated purchase, i.e. a captive market for product by manufacturers or end users, guaranteeing large sales, is another form of subsidy. Guaranteed selling price above the market price is another subsidy. Othere forms are also used.
The government agreeing to shake you down for less money than it originally intended is not a subsidy. A subsidy is when you wind up with money in your pocket you never had in the first place.
In the fashion that David explained the depletion allowance, to the extent that those monies exceed the actual costs, they are subsidies, IMO.
When it is a special tax credit or deduction, not available to business that do not adopt its requirements but have the same expenses, to promote a certain form of business or outcome, it is a subsidy.
No, absolutely not. This is the sort of argument Democrats make when they propose a $2 million dollar increase in a program and Republicans cut that to a $1 million increase, and Democrats whine about a $1 million cut to the program. A subsidy puts money in your pocket you never had.
Sort of like Obamacare was before the fine was removed. Imagine what insurance would cost an individual by now.
Oregon is wanting to get rid of the interest deduction on a primary residence ….
That is a subsidy that I like and I don’t want it to go away.
It’s not a subsidy. They are not writing you a check, just hijacking less of your money.
If renewable diesel is chemically indistinguishable from petroleum diesel, how can the use of renewable diesel reduce CO2 emissions by any amount, much less 4.2%?
Who said it had to make sense? Drop in the bucket in any case.
It has to do with the source of the carbon.
The carbon in petroleum diesel comes from hydrocarbons that have been locked away in geological sequestration for 100’s of thousands to millions of years.
The carbon in renewable diesel comes from biomass that was already participating in the active carbon cycle.
It may seem like a distinction without a difference, however the former does have a cumulative effect on atmospheric CO2, while the latter doesn’t. Although, the difference is very small.
@David, knowing how these things work, I am reasonably certain that the emissions involved in bringing the feedstock to a “renewable” diesel refinery are NOT included in the calculations.
I am QUITE certain that the emissions from planting, irrigating, fertilizing, harvesting, pressing, soy oil refining, bleaching, deodorizing, and transport of product in each of those steps are FAR more than those from pumping oil from the ground and through a pipeline.
It would not surprise me in the least if a consideration of ALL emissions for each process showed that “renewable” diesel emits MORE evil carbon into the air.
rather like burning wood for electrical generation as compared to natural gas or even coal — both produce considerably less CO2 per unit of electricity. Ignore the ridiculous CO2 funk and burning wood might make decent sense sometimes, depending on cost to process.
The latter (biomass source) might or might not, and when it does, it may be many times (to recycle) the “years to absolute doom” being widely preached. It also often has large adverse environmental results and/or is considerably more expensive.
That calculation is simple. Take renewable divided by petroleum, calculate the anomaly, then divide by unicorns then multiply by fairy farts. Just like climate models and SLR. The answer cannot possibly be 4.1 or 4.3. It IS settled science.
supposedly direct cycle from plants, to human use, back to plants
That $100 energy rebate will only make the terrible inflation we already have much worse.
Watching the democrats run the government is like giving an expensive watch to a child and watching in horror as the child repeatedly slams the watch against the concrete sidewalk.
horror is obviously a point of view
I find the second figure quite interesting, as diesel use generally follows the economy (highly correlated to the amount of goods produced). The wonks at the EIA are apparently projecting a very deep and very long Second Great Depression – much, much worse than the sharp and relatively short plandemic recession.
I can only hope that they are completely disconnected from reality.
Traders warn of looming global diesel shortage
Instead of being That 70’s Show, it’s Biden’s 70’s Shit Show.
Dope !
As mentioned by AndyHce, it appears planned to me also.
So Brandon shuts down the Keystone pipeline that would bring Canadian HEAVY crude that is great for refining diesel. What is brought in is shipped on trains owned by an American Oligarch Crony Capitalist Democrat donor?
projecting or taking part in the planning for?
When you are warning people about food shortages as a result of incompetent foreign policy, using food to make a replacement for gasoline or diesel is a crime against humanity.
Three observations.
Is propane (in general) more or less expensive than diesel (considering useable energy content)?
Well, I don’t know the answer to that – but it should be obvious that using diesel would be quite a bit more complicated.
For that use but with many others not so much. For instance, many ’emergency’ generators run on diesel, many run of propane
Not everyone drives the same number of miles each month. Those working from home versus a traveling salesman will get the same rebate. On the other hand, everyone is going to eat about the same amount of food. No one has ever accused liberals of being deep thinkers.
Not everyone works. Those working will get the same rebate as those not working. Those not working are more likely to vote democrat.
Clyde, no offense meant to you by this comment BUT:
The Democrats, if they can get away with it, will Rebate everyone “living” in the US, including illegals, and give everyone the same rebate, regardless of if they even own a ICE car, including city dwellers who NEVER buy fuel and EV owners who have already been subsidized on their purchase. This would be another “redistribution” from, in general, Rural and working people, i.e. Republican, to urban and non working people, i.e. Democrats.
That is this is a payoff to their voters.
So, since you appear to have missed the whole point of the scam, which is their intent, they MAY be deeper thinkers than you think they are.
Where is word salad Bob? He always posts during a David article.
Bob is a voice of sanity in comparison to the RFS crowd.
RFS?
My apologies. RFS = Renewable Fuel Standard. It’s an EPA environmental / climate change boondoggle that is broadly supported by the ethanol / farm lobby. Presumably it also has something to do with energy ‘security’, which is a sop left over from the ‘renewable’ fuels programs of the Carter years.
The RFS crowd knows it is a scam.
Bob doesn’t know anything but emotionally driven rants.
Pssst! You got any roubles lying around?
German gas buyers raise the alarm over Russia’s rouble demand (msn.com)
The climate changers are in full panic mode.
Can you say ‘unintended consequences’?
“EIA AEO2022 projects that, market demand, despite policies, will continue to drive this: Petroleum and natural gas are the most-used fuels in the United States through 2050…
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2022.03.17/main.svgSource: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2022 (AEO2022)
Note: Biofuels are both shown separately and are included in petroleum and other liquids.”
It appears the EIA has not gotten the “Net Zero by 2050” e-mail.
Email to EIA:
In this week’s EIA Natural Gas Weekly Update (24 March 2022) under the Overview section under the heading “International Spot Prices” is the following statement:
…International natural gas spot prices declined this report week but have remained elevated since the start of Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine on February 24…
That statement is not accurate. The fact is that international natural gas spot prices have remained elevated throughout the winter ever since the near-complete failure of European wind and solar generators to produce sufficient electricity supplies in the autumn of 2021.
The original statement should be corrected to reflect this fact.
“The maximum effect that renewable diesel could possibly have is an insignificant effect.”
Alas it has a significant effect. On subsidies to the agro-business sector.
Oddgeir