The Advantages of Bio-Oil
Bio-oil production is emerging as a significant frontier in the pursuit of net zero emissions, converting greenhouse gasses into useful products to meet ever increasing clean energy demands. Large commercial bio-oil production facilities, particularly in Brazil and increasingly in regions like the United States and parts of Europe, demonstrate the potential to transform CO2 into a valuable commodity.
What is Bio-Oil?
Bio-oil refers to oil-like compounds produced from biological sources of carbon. Common large scale sources of atmospheric carbon are biomass, source-separated green waste, biosolids (a.k.a. sewage sludge), waste paper and cardboard, agricultural waste such as corn stover, and similar plant derived sources of carbon. During photosynthesis, plants convert atmospheric carbon dioxide into cellulosic material that can subsequently be converted into bio-oil. Bio-oils often contain 30%-40% atmospheric carbon by mass.
One significant application of bio-oil is its upgrade into biofuels, which can then be substituted for fossil fuels and reduce net carbon emissions via displacement. Currently, annual CO2 emissions are approximately 37 billion tons, contributing significantly to global climate change challenges (International Energy Agency 2023).
The Current State of Bio-oil Production
The United States leads in biofuel production, contributing nearly 38 percent of the global output in 2022 (Statista 2024). It produced 6.8 million tons of biodiesel that year. Meanwhile, large facilities in Brazil are producing bio-oil by the megatons, amounting to 3.8 million tons annually. Globally, biofuel production reached 1,914 thousand barrels per day in 2022, totaling 95 megatons per year (Statista 2024). This seemingly large global production represents a mere 0.25% of production required to address global carbon emissions. To achieve a substantial impact, facilities would need to scale up by almost three orders of magnitude —requiring the equivalent output of over a thousand of the world’s largest existing plants.
Inadequacies of Current and Proposed Near-Term Solutions
Several less impactful carbon reduction solutions receive billions in capital, while critical technologies remain underfunded. For example, Direct Air Capture (DAC) facilities can each remove about 1 million tons of CO2 annually. However, to address the 37.6 gigatons of annual excess emissions, we would need about 37,600 such facilities. Afforestation would need to cover an area nearly the size of India, about 3.76 billion hectares, to sequester a similar amount of CO2. Biochar production would have to increase over 125,000-fold to see similar results.
Events like San Francisco Climate Week highlight promising but relatively minor solutions compared to the scale of the challenge. Notably absent from Climate Week style events are major industrial players who are making a large-scale business out of bio-oil production. Even so, a massive scaling up of these solutions is required to effectively combat climate change, necessitating a shift in financial resources from less effective approaches and greenwashing to large scale industrial transformation.
The Feasibility of Bio-oil
Bio-oil emerges as a more feasible option due to its current integration into industrial processes and its dual functionality as both a fuel and a carbon capture method. Its production capacity can expand more quickly and directly, especially in countries like Brazil and the US, where it is already operational at commercial scale.
Bio-oil leverages existing infrastructure and doesn’t require extensive capital or time to establish new agricultural areas or other costly production methods. Furthermore, as bio-oil technology advances, it could become even more cost-effective, potentially yielding more carbon capture per dollar invested. This provides a compelling reason to redirect focus and funding towards enhancing and multiplying bio-oil facilities worldwide. A final, immense, advantage of bio-oil production facilities, is their ability to be self-powered, using bio-derived fuel (e.g. wood) to provide heat energy from combustion that powers the bio-oil production process. This is in direct contrast to DAC and other technologies that rely on huge, and often non-existent, sources of cheap green electricity to operate.
Heavy Industry is the Key to a Green Industrial Revolution
Heavy industry, historically a major polluter, paradoxically holds the keys to pivotal large-scale climate solutions. Current bio-oil production stands at 95 megatons per year, but to significantly impact climate change, it needs to ramp up to 37.6 gigatons annually. This represents a 400-fold increase. Learning from past industrial scale-ups provides valuable insights for this challenge. For instance, the automotive industry saw exponential growth in the early to mid-20th century. In the United States, annual automobile production surged from about 8,000 vehicles in 1900 to 5.3 million vehicles by 1929 (Melosi 2004), increasing approximately 660 times in three decades. This rapid growth highlights heavy industry’s capacity to scale production in response to demand and technological advances.
Similarly, the projected need for industrial equipment to support bio-oil scaling, potentially exceeding $4.5 trillion (Barnard 2016), mirrors the automotive industry’s expansion. This growth required significant capital investment, innovation in mass production techniques, and extensive infrastructure development. This historical precedent shows that with substantial investment, technological innovation, and supportive policies, the bio-oil industry could achieve the necessary growth to significantly impact climate change mitigation efforts.
A Call to Action
The potential of bio-oil production, particularly its integration within existing industrial frameworks and energy independence, positions it as a uniquely scalable solution to address the challenges of global warming. By harnessing the lessons from past industrial revolutions and leveraging existing infrastructure, bio-oil production not only promises a more efficient use of capital but also aligns with long-term sustainability goals. This strategic shift requires bold investments and a global commitment to innovate beyond the limitations of current solutions, underscoring the vital role of industry leadership in the fight against climate change.
James White PhD and Joseph Moniodis PhD | 2nd July 2024
Citation: James White and Joseph Moniodis. 2024. “The Advantages of Bio-Oil.” Carbon Critical. https://carbon-critical.com/the-advantages-of-bio-oil/.
References
Barnard, Michael. 2016. “Capturing Carbon Would Cost Twice The Global Annual GDP.” Clean Technica. https://cleantechnica.com/2016/11/03/capturing-carbon-cost-twice-global-annual-gdp/.
International Energy Agency. 2023. “Global CO2 emissions rose less than initially feared in 2022 as clean energy growth offset much of the impact of greater coal and oil use – News – IEA.” International Energy Agency. https://www.iea.org/news/global-co2-emissions-rose-less-than-initially-feared-in-2022-as-clean-energy-growth-offset-much-of-the-impact-of-greater-coal-and-oil-use.
Melosi, Martin V. 2004. “The Automobile and the Environment in American History by Martin V. Melosi.” Automobile In American Life and Society. http://www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/Environment/E_Overview/E_Overview.htm.
Statista. 2024. “Global biofuel production 2022.” Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/274163/global-biofuel-production-in-oil-equivalent/.
Statista. 2024. “Global biofuel production by country 2022.” Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/274168/biofuel-production-in-leading-countries-in-oil-equivalent/.