BP rules out building large biofuels facilities

14 July 2006 17:08  [Source: ICIS news]

TORONTO (ICIS news)--BP won’t build any large-scale bio-fuels refineries or plants in the near future as biofuels technology still has a long way to go to justify such investments, a company executive said on Friday.

“BP is not committing billions of dollars to go out an build [biofuels] plants today” because the relevant technologies for biofuels production still have to be developed for such projects to become economical, Justin Adams, BP director for long term technology strategy, told delegates at the Third Annual World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioprocessing in Toronto.

At this time, the biofuels sector is still an “extremely immature” industry, and how it will develop will change over time, Adams said.

“We have to learn from some of the other experiences in the energy sector around ‘over-hyping’ what we really have, and I think the hype and the bubble around hydrogen technology is a great point,” Adams said. The hype around hydrogen technology has been deflated as the industry has begun to see the challenges posed by the technology, he said. Hydrogen as a transport fuel may still come, but it will take until at least 2050, he added.

Biofuels can have a role in displacing oil but the cost of making biofuels is still very high. The industry needs low-cost and abundant feedstocks and cost-effective conversion technologies to convert ligno-cellulosic materials into transportation fuels, Adams said.

It is important to move beyond simple ethanol, Adams said. He emphasised biobutanol and its advantages over ethanol, and he predicted an increasing role for coal in meeting future fuels demand.

By: Stefan Baumgarten
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