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#65. Bruce Comer and Eric van den Heuvel on What’s the Future for HVO??

07.05.21 | Podcast | By:

This video podcast is a follow up to the recent web conference on the future of HVO, featuring speakers Bruce Comer, Managing Director of Ocean Park, Eric van den Heuvel, Founder and Partner of Studio Gear Up for their insights, and my co-host Philippe Marchand, Bioenergy Steering Committee Member, European Technology and Innovation Platform (ETIP) and Senior Biofuels Expert recently retired from TOTAL. Following are a couple of excerpts from our discussion, which you can view or download below, or listen to in ITunes, Spotify, Google Podcasts or TuneIn.

Bruce on Potential Cross-Border Distributions of Feedstocks and Fuels in the U.S.:

“There are issues that could end up in inefficient, sub-optimal, cross border distributions of feedstocks or fuels. Let’s take the U.S..  California and the other states are erecting their own individual policies. Right now, 95 to 99% of all renewable diesel in the United States has to go to California because California is paying to have it driven there. California then imports from Singapore, so their policy is very advanced, very much on the vanguard in terms of willingness to pay and reward the lower CI score, but you’re now starting to realign global resources to feed this policy.

 

What I think we might see, and now you’re starting to see in Washington state and Oregon and Western Canada, is it’ll become a bidding war for these fuels. It doesn’t take a logistics expert that you’re now starting to burn resources, to allocate two pockets of policies that are not aligned. And to some extent, I think some of these models, or the CI scores, when they’re driven by a small team within CARB in California, they’re open to lobbying, advocacy, arguments about model assumptions. So I think you’ve hit on something.”

Eric on Why the Liquid Fuels Sector Needs a Strategy for Renewable Fuels in the EU:

“If you have a look at the current policy developments, you see that for a mainly for road transport, there’s a high expectation on the success of electric mobility. There is a regulation in place to bring them in, especially the CO2 performance standards for light-duty and medium-duty vehicles. There are also CO2 standards for heavy duties in place, which means that in the near future, they expect, or perhaps also push or force these vehicles to be zero emission-based vehicles. The reason why this is, is because they don’t see any movement yet of the liquid fuel sector to actually accommodate a shift to renewables. In this question, it is risky indeed, to have such a strategy, especially when you’re a strategy on electric mobility or zero emission would fail or go much slower than many anticipate.

 

But the only thing that, let’s say, this sector can bring to the policymakers is, well, if they want to convince them that, ‘Well, you have to come up with a sound sustainable feedstock mobilization strategy to overcome this,’ and actually say, ‘Well, we can also expand beyond this and Annex 9a list in mobilization in a European setting with sustainability safeguards, stuff like that.’ So the sector has to work on such a strategy, otherwise policymakers will create their own success on the zero emission strategy. It is risky from the policymakers, but I think perhaps tries to push the sector to come up with a sound strategy to deliver on the noble liquid fuels.”

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