https://taxfoundation.org/gas-taxes-in-europe-2022/
The diesel tax in Germany is reported at $2.19/gal. The tax was recently reduced by $0.17/gal to ease the burden on consumers. The reduction is temporary.
That still makes importing diesel from the US attractive.
I don’t see Bio Diesel ever mentioned in the mix…Louis Dreyfus near me produces millions of gallons a year
“I don’t see Bio Diesel ever mentioned in the mix…Louis Dreyfus near me produces millions of gallons a year”
From the following, combined production of biodiesel and renewable diesel fuel in 2021 was 48,362 thousand barrels. (Listed under Other Liquids)
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_cons_psup_dc_nus_mbbl_a.htm
From the same chart, annual production of petroleum based distillate fuel oil was 1,449,807 thousand barrels. The various grades of diesel and other fuel oils come under the class of distillate fuel oil (excluding residual fuel oil).
So, biodiesel production is about 3% the size of distillate fuel oil made from petroleum. This isn’t insignificant, but still a small part of the whole.
(This new TMF system deleted the quote at the top, so I put it in manually.)
Biodiesel is about all that is available near me. But this isn’t your father’s used French fry oil. From my understanding, it is a hydrocarbon made from plants in a chemical process. It ends up producing the same molecules for diesel fuel as you get when pumping out of the ground. Plus there’s no sulfur to deal with (which most modern diesels don’t like). At the pump, it’s called Renewable Diesel. Again, near me we mostly have R99, which is at least 99% non-dinosaur fuel. (I think the <1% comes from it being pumped and handled through the same lines as dino diesel without a cleaning process between them, so a bit of cross contamination happens.) I’ve heard of, but not seen for myself, R95, which is at least 95% renewable diesel. The mix is probably again dino-diesel, but this time on purpose.
–Peter
That sounds much better than traditional biodiesel which has cold weather problems. In the upper Midwest biodiesel is limited to 5-10% of the fuel mix.
DB2
Biodiesel is green. It’s a good choice when available. It can be blended with jet fuel to reduce carbon from air travel.
We have discussed this before. There is not enough to replace petroleum. It can contribute but is not the solution.
I don’t recall participating in those earlier discussions. Why isn’t there enough? Does it take more carbon and hydrogen than can reasonably be extracted? Or is the current production capacity too small?
—Peter
It basically boils down to the massive amount of land that would be required to generate the biomass.
Some years ago, I ran some numbers on using the Salton Sea to grow algae that is optimized to produce oil. That resource alone, could make a significant dent in the US’ oil needs. I wouldn’t worry about the environmental impact on the Sea. It’s near death now. Most of the fish species have gone extinct due to rising salinity. The Sea is plagued with algae blooms now. So, use the Sea to produce useful algae.
Steve
PBF Energy’s Chalmette refinery should be bringing on 20,000 barrels a day of biodiesel mid 2023.
A lot of time and money has been spent on algae to fuel without commercial success. Apparently the main problem is that algae mutate and good strains are swamped by poor ones. From five years ago:
"From 2005 to 2012, dozens of companies managed to extract hundreds of millions in cash from VCs in hopes of ultimately extracting fuel oil from algae. CEOs, entrepreneurs and investors were making huge claims about the promise of algae-based biofuels; the U.S. Department of Energy was also making big bets through its bioenergy technologies office; industry advocates claimed that commercial algae fuels were within near-term reach.
“Jim Lane of Biofuels Digest authored what was possibly history’s least accurate market forecast, projecting that algal biofuel capacity would reach 1 billion gallons by 2014. In 2009, Solazyme promised competitively priced fuel from algae by 2012. Algenol planned to make 100 million gallons of ethanol annually in Mexico’s Sonoran Desert by the end of 2009 and 1 billion gallons by the end of 2012 at a production rate of 10,000 gallons per acre. PetroSun looked to develop an algae farm network of 1,100 acres of saltwater ponds that could produce 4.4 million gallons of algal oil and 110 million pounds of biomass per year.”
IIRC, Solazyme ended up making cosmetics.
DB2
The conclusion was that the area required to produce enough biodiesel to replace petroleum is not practical.
This topic was much discussed usually on the Renewable Energy board and on the old Climate Change board.
Of the oil seeds, rapeseed is the highest oil content. Grows mostly in Canada and maybe North Dakota. Largest US source is soybean oil. Coconut oil from Asia has environmental concerns.
Here’s a spreadsheet. Lets see how it does–
US Soybean Production 4.44x10^9 bu 60 lb/bu 20 % oil 53.28 x 10^9 lb soybean oil/yr 0.126857142857143 x 10^9 barrels/yr
US Oil Consumption 7.26 x 10^9 barrels/yr
rapeseed North America prod 3.946x10^9 lbs 40 % oil 1.5784 x 10^9 lb rape seed oil/yr 0.00375809523809524 x 10^9 barrel/yr
US Oil Consumption is 7.26 billion barrels/yr
If all US Soybeans are converted to soybean oil, production will be 0.127 billion barrels/yr.
If all North American rape seed is converted to oil, production will be about 1/30 th of soybean oil production. or 0.00375 billion barrels/yr.
The numbers are not even close. We cannot replace petroleum with vegetable oil.
Heres another table I have on file on sources of vegetable oil–
Soybeans and oil seeds for biodiesel
yield/acre gal/bu gal/acre % lb/bu density lb/gal lb oil/bu official
Corn 200 0.0992204110559887 19.8440822111977 1.35 56 0.918 7.6194 0.756 18
Soybeans 40 1.41 56.4 48 gal/acre offically 48
Linseed oil 2000 108.822386319471 42 56 0.93 7.719 2000 lb/acre 51
Safflower 83 83
Sunflower oil 102 102
Peanut 113 113
Canola 1840 140 40 50 0.915 7.5945 1840 lb/acre 127
gal/acre
Corn 18
Soybeans 48
Linseed oil 51 North Dakota, Minnesota Flax
Safflower 83 California, Montana, North Dakota
Sunflower oil 102 Dakota & Minnesota
Peanut 113 65% Mississippi to Florida
Canola 127 Canada, upper Midwest, Dakotas Rapeseed
On a gallons of oil/per acre, canola or rapeseed is by far the most productive. Canola is rapeseed processed for food use.
Here is possibly another way to look at it. About 40% of the corn grown in the US goes to producing ethanol for mixing with gasoline. If you travel to the big corn growing states of Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska, you will see field after field of corn in the summer. There are also plenty of soybean fields, which are planted in alternate years to help the soil.
So, 40% of the corn goes to making ethanol. But ethanol is usually mixed to only a 10% percentage with gasoline. Biodiesel, from what I understand, is 100% biofuel. It takes more plant matter to make a 100% product, than only a 10% product, as is the case with ethanol.
The corn and soybeans used to be grown mostly for animal feed. Corn for carbohydrates and soybeans for protein (plus some carbohydrate). Shifting these major crops to producing biofuels leaves less for the livestock, so beef, pork, chicken, turkey…whatever, becomes more expensive. Now we are seeing these fake meat products appear in supermarkets and fast food restaurants. The fake meat is supposedly printed out on 3D printers or something.
Perhaps I was too subtle. The “explains things” was two-fold. 1. As stated, I don’t read those boards. 2. Going unstated, I stopped reading those boards because they aren’t worth reading.
The fake meat craze is fading fast.
Major Warning we are running out of diesel fuel soon?
Taken to a maximum, true. But the unplanted acreage due to farm crop supports varies between 7-10%, so there is a fair amount of room to plant for fuel without touching the crops that are used for feed stock (or human consumption.)
There’s certainly not enough of it for full replacement, obviously, but I find very few serious analysts who think that is even a remotely plausible possibility.
There are also ways to extract the necessary carbon from various waste streams. That seems to be a commonly overlooked source that doesn’t impact farm production.
—Peter