A few updates from the intersection of RINs and ethanol. It’s starting to look like there have been physical market reactions to the rising price of RINs.
Archive for the ‘biofuel’ Category
An update from the ethanol/RINs battleground: hitting physical markets
By John Kingston | April 12, 2013 06:04 AM Comments (0)
EPA on renewable fuels fraud and what makes a commodity
By Meghan Gordon | February 22, 2013 01:59 PM Comments (0)
When the Environmental Protection Agency set up renewable fuel mandates for US refiners, it didn’t intend for the underlying credits to become commodities.
That’s how Byron Bunker, director of EPA’s compliance division, put it to a room of biodiesel producers recently. He was explaining the agency’s attempt to reform the market for those credits after three cases of fraud roiled the biodiesel industry last year.
It sounded like a crazy statement at first. How could EPA not know that the credits — called Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) — would be bought and sold for profit?
EPA bets on two cellulosic makers for ambitious US blending mandate
By Meghan Gordon | February 5, 2013 11:55 AM Comments (0)
US companies hoping to make the world’s first commercial-scale gasoline and diesel refined from plant waste have much to prove in 2013, after suffering another year of start-up delays, growing attacks by the oil industry and an unfavorable court ruling.
The second-generation biofuels industry’s best defense against those attacks will be to do what the Environmental Protection Agency thinks it can: make 11 million gallons of cellulosic fuel for refiners to blend under the Renewable Fuel Standard.
Puzzling over the US mandate for a fuel that doesn’t exist yet
By Meghan Gordon | December 10, 2012 06:24 PM Comments (0)
Someone sitting through oral arguments this morning at the DC Circuit without any knowledge of biofuels might come away asking: “So, you’re telling me the Environmental Protection Agency requires refiners to blend a certain type of fuel into gasoline, but that fuel doesn’t exist? And the only time someone made that fuel in the US, they exported it to Brazil?”
Yep and yep.
Senior Judge Stephen Williams seemed particularly perplexed by the second detail, which came out during an aside by the American Petroleum Institute’s lawyer.
At issue in the hearing was the Environmental Protection Agency’s annual requirement for refiners to blend a certain amount of cellulosic-based biofuel into gasoline supplies under the Renewable Fuel Standard. The 2007 policy mandates the blending of other fuels like corn-based ethanol and biodiesel.
But cellulosic fuel holds the special distinction of not existing, at least not in the US at commercial volumes yet.
US loses ethanol exporter status after Midwestern drought
By Meghan Gordon | November 13, 2012 08:03 AM Comments (6)
After a terrible summer for US ethanol producers, the country has shifted from net ethanol exporter to net importer for the first time in nearly three years.
The US imported 21,000 barrels per day more ethanol in August than it exported, according to the latest stats available from the Energy Information Administration’s Petroleum Supply Monthly report.
Dubai World Energy Forum: A right royal affair
By Herman Wang | October 29, 2012 09:43 AM Comments (0)
The three-day World Energy Forum in Dubai this past week was full of pomp and circumstance. Sheikhs, kings, presidents and prime ministers from across the world were there. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon was in attendance.
The proceedings were even graced by a speech from Her Royal Highness Princess Haya of Dubai, whose appearance at the First Ladies Summit at the forum was greeted by dozens, if not hundreds, of photographers and a crowd of twittering bystanders, craning for a glimpse of the glamorous wife of Sheikh Mohammed al-Maktoum, ruler of Dubai.
Where energy independence peddlers go wrong
By Meghan Gordon | October 23, 2012 02:43 AM Comments (5)
Anne Korin’s work is a great antidote to all the energy independence talk swirling around Washington.
She’s co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security and author of Turning Oil into Salt: Energy Independence through Fuel Choice.
First the good news: US net petroleum imports have dropped a lot in absolute and relative terms in recent years. They fell from 12.5 million b/d in 2005 to 8.5 million b/d last year, and from 60% of domestic demand in 2005 to an expected 42% this year. The Energy Information Administration sees foreign oil falling to 36% of US consumption by 2035.
Regulation & The Environment: EPA’s sky-high cellulosic ethanol targets and whether industry will ever reach them
By News Desk | August 20, 2012 04:43 PM Comments (0)
As the requirement for blending cellulosic ethanol in the US fuel supply continues to rise, even though it still doesn’t exist in commercial quantities, there is debate over whether the numbers will ever be reached. Not everybody has thrown in the towel, as Meghan Gordon discusses in this week’s Oilgram News column, Regulation & The Environment.
BP bucks oil industry allies on advanced biofuels, with a boost from the US government
By News Desk | July 13, 2012 09:13 AM Comments (0)
Oil giant BP is betting big on biofuels, which the London-based company says could account for 30% of the world’s liquid transportation fuels by 2030, sharply reducing demand for gasoline and other refined petroleum products in the process.
BP is especially enthusiastic about cellulosic biofuels, which are more environmentally friendly than conventional corn-based ethanol because they are made from non-edible plants or even “dedicated energy crops” grown on marginal lands. BP plans to break ground on a major cellulosic ethanol plant in Florida later this year, and it may also convert a conventional ethanol facility in its native United Kingdom to produce the fuel.
US biofuels advocates aim to raise profile with tax break debate
By Katharine Fraser | June 22, 2012 09:22 AM Comments (0)
You know you have arrived if a Saudi oil minister and a UN official talk about your relevance or prevalence, right? In the past couple of weeks, renewables and biofuels have been on the tongues of such dignitaries, perhaps signaling they may be emerging from being seen as insignificant.
But there’s a move afoot to alter the US tax code to boost renewables further.