My fellow olds will recall that, back in the 2000s, biofuels were an extremely big deal in the clean-energy world, one of a tiny handful of decarbonization solutions that seemed viable. Biofuels — and the many advanced versions thereof allegedly on the horizon — dominated discussions of climate change policy.
Much has changed since then. Principally, it has become clear that electrification is the cheapest path to decarbonization for most sectors, including the transportation sector. The Biden administration has explicitly put electrification at the center of its transportation decarbonization strategy.
Biofuels, in the meantime, have gone exactly nowhere. Advanced biofuels remain almost entirely notional, old-fashioned corn ethanol remains as wasteful as ever, and new scientific evidence suggests that the carbon costs of biofuels are much larger than previously appreciated.
