In the News

Ethanol Producer Magazine

Oct 5, 2021

U.S. ethanol exports in August saw substantial improvement from the prior month’s slump, expanding 56% to 80.48 million gallons (mg). Canada was the top destination for the fifth straight month with imports of 33.9 mg, the largest volume since March (representing 42% of the August U.S. ethanol export market). Given that former key destinations Brazil, China, and India were again nearly absent from the market, the scope of U.S. ethanol exports extended to a broader range of customers than has been the norm. Larger markets included South Korea (9.9 mg, up 86%), the United Kingdom (up fivefold to a two-year high of 6.7 mg), Peru (6.2 mg, up from zero), Nigeria (5.0 mg, up from zero), the Netherlands (4.9 mg, up 22%), and Mexico (4.0 mg, up 83%). Shipments over the first eight months of the year were 796.3 mg, down 10% from the same period in 2020.

The U.S. imported 9.6 mg of undenatured ethanol from Brazil, along with a minimal volume of denatured ethanol from South Africa and Canada.

U.S. exports of dried distillers grains (DDGS)—the animal feed co-product generated by dry-mill ethanol plants—spiked 17% to 1.24 million metric tons (mt). This marks the highest volume of U.S. DDGS exports since Aug. 2015, with much of the growth occurring outside of our largest markets. Exports to Mexico, our top customer for the last eleven months, declined by 18% to a four-month low of 203,666 mt (representing just 16% of all U.S. DDGS shipments in August). DDGS sales to Vietnam jumped 29% to 194,667 mt, its second-largest monthly purchase to date. Exports to Turkey slowed after a large bump in July, down 43% to 86,772 mt. Substantial export volumes also landed in Canada (86,238 mt, up 23% to the largest volume in over a decade), South Korea (79,859 mt, down 10%), Indonesia (64,853 mt, down 3%), China (56,573 mt, up 61% to the largest volume in more than four years), Thailand (55,554 mt, up 153%), and New Zealand (50,000 mt, up from zero). Total DDGS exports through August were 7.73 million mt, which is 10% ahead of last year at this time.

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Ethanol Producer Magazine

Oct 5, 2021

AdvanceBio LLC has been selected by D3MAX to lead the process development and design for a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) funded project that supports the newly announced Sustainable Aviation Fuel Grand Challenge.

Launched by the DOE, U.S. Department of Transportation and U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Grand Challenge represents an effort to reduce the cost, enhance the sustainability and expand the production and use of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF). D3MAX’s proposal to develop a pilot plant capable of producing SAF from corn stover was chosen as an awardee under DOE’s Bioenergy Technologies Office Scale-Up and Conversion funding opportunity announcement number DE-FOA-0002396, Topic Area 1b: Scale-Up – Pilot Scale for Biofuels and Bioproducts. 

Based upon its extensive experience in biomass processing and process development, AdvanceBio was selected to provide process design services for development and construction of the pilot plant.

“We have worked successfully with AdvanceBio in the past and look forward to doing so again on this important project,” said Mark Yancey, chief technology officer at D3MAX. “We need to decarbonize aviation fuel and we expect that corn stover to SAF will play a major role in this effort.”

"We look forward to the opportunity to support the scale-up of such a transformative technology,” said Dale Monceaux, principal, AdvanceBio. “After literally decades of effort and billions of dollars of investment resulting in incremental improvements in biofuels technologies, National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL) process offers the opportunity for the first truly revolutionary development in the quest for sustainable, cost-effective, biomass-based fuels and chemicals."

The project, called SAFFiRE (Sustainable Aviation Fuel from Renewable Ethanol), will demonstrate reliable, low-greenhouse gas (GHG) production of SAF from corn stover in a fully integrated, 10 metric ton per day pilot-scale facility. The novel process utilizes NREL’s low-temperature deacetylation and mechanical refining (DMR) pretreatment, enzymatic hydrolysis using Novozymes commercial hydrolytic enzymes, C5/C6 sugar fermentation to an intermediate ethanol product using commercial yeast from Lallemand and LanzaJet’s alcohol-to-jet (ATJ) process to convert the ethanol to SAF. In addition to the low cost, high titer, highly fermentable sugars produced in this reliable low-cost pretreatment, the valuable, non-condensed lignin produced will be recovered, dried and pelletized for sale as fuel pellets or sold directly for upgrading, all contributing to the lifecycle analysis (LCA).

“We identified a new process pathway that permits attainment of a negative GHG emission target. This approach is so transformative that our LCA concepts will be adopted by many entering the field from now on,” said Mike Himmel, NREL Senior Fellow.

About AdvanceBio LLC

AdvanceBio provides expert technical support for commercial fermentation and related unit operations across a range of bio-based industries. Our team of leading technologists and engineers brings over 100 years of combined experience in operations management, technology development and process design in starch, sugar and lignocellulosic-based ethanol, as well as food manufacturing. For more information, visit www.advancebio.com.

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PR Newswire

Sep 29, 2021

Two studies conducted by Transport Energy Strategies (TES) and THiggins Energy Consulting show that gasoline blended with ethanol lowers carbon intensity (CI) even more than what is modeled today and what is shown in recent studies. A key finding in both studies is that blended ethanol not only displaces some of the gasoline but enables a reduction of aromatics in all of the gasoline in the blend. Aromatics have a high CI, and their reduction further decreases the GHG impact of the E10. This advantageous blending attribute is due to ethanol's high octane rating and has been neglected in prior literature.

"For years, the ethanol industry has touted the value of displacing aromatics with ethanol from an air pollution and public health standpoint, but no one has, to our team's knowledge, ever considered what displacement might mean for carbon intensity and for reducing GHG emissions," saidTammy Klein, founder and CEO of Transport Energy Strategies and a member of the study team. "Our findings break new ground."

GREET assessments, along with a study for the US Department of Agriculture and the current values used by the California Air Resources Board, yield an average CI for ethanol that is 40.4% below the value for petroleum gasoline. A recent study led byHarvardpresents a deeper reduction. Using the 40.4% ethanol advantage, and assuming a CI of 93 g/MJ for gasoline, the CI of ethanol is estimated at 55.5 g/MJ.

Displacement of petroleum gasoline to form E10 offers direct benefits from the low CI of the ethanol. In Well-to-Wheels Carbon Intensity for Ethanol Blended Fuels,  the TES study team found that when both direct displacement and reduction of aromatics in the blend are attributed to ethanol as the enabling additive, a "reduced blending CI" (BCI) of 43.4 g/MJ is found for ethanol when it is used in E10. Similarly, for anticipated market blending, the BCI for E20 is 44.8 g/MJ, a greater reduction than the 55.5 g/MJ from unblended ethanol. If the 52.4 g/MJ CI for unblended ethanol from the GREET estimate alone is used, the BCI for ethanol in E10 is about 40 g/MJ.

Refinery modeling, economic considerations, availability of feedstocks and examination of gasoline properties supported the conclusion in Quantifying Ethanol CI Benefits in Gasoline Composition  that as ethanol is blended into gasoline, so aromatics are reduced to maintain a constant octane rating. "The primary refinery option for lower octane is through lower severity or throughput for the gasoline reformer," saidTerry Higgins, president of THiggins Energy Consulting. "This, in turn, reduces both gasoline aromatic content and carbon intensity. When blended in gasoline, ethanol offers higher GHG benefits than well to wheels studies recognize for pure ethanol."

Transport Energy Strategies  (http://www.transportenergystrategies.com)  is a consultancy that provides market and policy intelligence, research analysis and strategic advice to clients on a range of global transport energy issues. THiggins Energy Consulting is a consultancy that provides refinery modeling providing energy consulting services to the petroleum and related industries with a primary area of focus on the impact of fuel quality trends on refining and application of new refining technology.

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Congresswoman Cheri Bustos

Sep 28, 2021

WASHINGTON –Today,Congresswomen Cheri Bustos (D-IL-17), Cindy Axne (D-IA-03), Angie Craig (D-MN-02)andSenator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)led a bicameral group of Congressional members spanning seven states in a letter urging the Administration to increase biofuels usage and reject any reduction in biofuel blending requirements.

After recent reports that the Administration may be considering lowering the Renewable Volume Obligations (RVOs), the group raised serious concerns about the harm a reduction in biofuels usage could cause to the Administrations clean energy goals and economic stability of the renewable fuels marketplace.

“We have strong reservations about the potential for the Administration to destroy over 5 billion gallons of biofuel volume from the 2020, 2021, and 2022 RVOs. This action would directly undermine your commitment to address climate change and restore integrity to the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS),”the letter states.“Every gallon of biofuels that is blended into our nation’s fuel supply displaces a gallon of oil and cuts carbon emissions…Reducing biofuel blending requirements will increase greenhouse gas emissions.”

“Rather than exempting refiners of their obligations under the Clean Air Act, we urge the Administration to provide additional certainty and stability to the renewable fuels marketplace by issuing strong RVOs for 2021 and 2022, and declining to remand any gallons from the 2020 RVO. These actions will create jobs, drive American investment, and cut carbon emissions from the transportation sector.”

The letter was also signed by Reps. Mark Pocan, Raja Krishnamoorthi, Bobby Rush, David Scott, Tim Ryan and Ron Kind, and Senators Dick Durbin, Tammy Duckworth, Tina Smith, Tammy Baldwin and Debbie Stabenow.

In June,  Bustos, Axne, Craig and Klobuchar also led 12 bicameral colleagues in a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Economic Council (NEC)  expressing concern about reports that the agencies were considering exempting oil refiners of their obligations under the Clean Air Act’s Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).


Text of the letter is below:

September 27, 2021

The Honorable Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

President of the United States

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, D.C. 20500       

The Honorable Gina McCarthy

National Climate Advisor

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear President Biden and Ms. McCarthy:

Thank you for your work to decarbonize our nation’s transportation sector and help the United States achieve a clean energy future. Your efforts are critical to maintaining U.S. competitiveness across the globe while bolstering good-paying, union jobs here at home.

We write today with serious concern about recent reports that the Administration is considering a significant reduction to the annual biofuel blending requirements known as the Renewable Volume Obligations (RVOs). Specifically, we have strong reservations about the potential for the Administration to destroy over 5 billion gallons of biofuel volume from the 2020, 2021, and 2022 RVOs. This action would directly undermine your commitment to address climate change and restore integrity to the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).

The RFS was designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the vehicle transportation sector, diversify our fuel supply, strengthen our national security, and drive economic opportunity. When allowed to function as Congress intended, the RFS has delivered on these goals while serving as the economic engine behind a burgeoning bio-based manufacturing sector across rural America and a biofuel industry with a 100-percent U.S. supply chain and a higher union density than the national average.

Every gallon of biofuels that is blended into our nation’s fuel supply displaces a gallon of oil and cuts carbon emissions. Multiple studies from academic institutions, federal agencies, and national laboratories have confirmed that corn ethanol (46 percent ), cellulosic ethanol (70  – 126  percent), and biodiesel (66 – 79  percent) are less carbon intensive than gasoline and petroleum diesel. Reducing biofuel blending requirements will increase greenhouse gas emissions.

Congress clearly intended the RFS to be a forward-looking policy to drive investments in biofuels production, lead to the next generation of advanced biofuels, and fuel a clean energy agenda for decades. Rather than exempting refiners of their obligations under the Clean Air Act, we urge the Administration to provide additional certainty and stability to the renewable fuels marketplace by issuing strong RVOs for 2021 and 2022, and declining to remand any gallons from the 2020 RVO. These actions will create jobs, drive American investment, and cut carbon emissions from the transportation sector.

Again, we appreciate your work to address the climate crisis, and we urge you to reject any actions that would reduce the RVOs or exempt oil refiners of their obligations under the RFS.

We look forward to working with you on this important matter.

Read the original press release here

Ethanol Producer Magazine

Sept 21, 2021

As policymakers in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan consider new emission reduction initiatives to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, the U.S. Grains Council is working to demonstrate the pathway for decarbonization through increased ethanol blending into local fuel supplies. Each country is focused on reducing economy-wide emissions and the transport sector remains high on the list in terms of achievable emissions reductions.

Japan’s strategic energy plan is being revised this summer and policies are in development to achieve the country’s carbon neutrality goals by 2050. Direct blending of ethanol presents an immediate opportunity for the country to further reduce transport emissions to achieve these policy outcomes. Today, Japan does not currently blend ethanol directly; it relies on pre-blended ethanol in the form of ethyl tertiary-butyl ether (ETBE) that reduces 712,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year. With an average blend rate of just 1.9 percent, direct blending of at least 10 percent would drastically reduce carbon emissions for the transport sector.

Currently, the total potential U.S. market share in Japan for ethanol is up to 66 percent of the estimated demand of 217 million gallons of ethanol used to make ETBE, equal to 142 million gallons per year. Investment to reduce carbon intensity of U.S. ethanol paid off in that market where U.S. product previously had no market share for the first decade of a policy that began in 2009. Even as the greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction requirement became more stringent under that policy’s revision in 2018, U.S. ethanol gained access due to carbon intensity improvements made by the U.S. industry during that time.

Much like Japan, South Korea announced a goal last fall of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, and the Korean public and private sectors have prepared scenarios and implementation measures for carbon reduction, including creating its Carbon Neutrality Committee that in the future will help set carbon neutrality policies.

The council’s Korea office has been providing stakeholders information on ethanol’s contributions to these goals and helping to create an environment for expanding ethanol use by demonstrating to the government the importance of introducing a fuel ethanol renewable fuel standard. Council staff has spoken at events hosted by the Korea Biofuel Forum and the Transportation Sector Working Group of the Carbon Neutrality Committee, that focuses on the importance of a local policy in achieving 2050 carbon neutrality in South Korea. The Council will co-host the Climate Crisis and Biofuel Symposium in September.

Taiwan is the most recent entrant in the region to announce similar targets to achieve net zero emissions. Like Korea, Taiwan does not blend ethanol into fuel. In the past, Taiwan has looked to pilot programs to blend ethanol in the market, but uptake was minimal, and the programs were discontinued. The enormity of the opportunity is immediate to demonstrate the role that ethanol has in supporting these policies as the U.S. ethanol industry value chain invests further to access these markets in the long term.

Author:Brian Healy
Director of Global Ethanol
Market Development
U.S. Grains Council
202.789.0789
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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Ethanol Producer Magazine

By Geoff Cooper

Renewable Fuels Association

Sep 20, 2021

Anyone who has been around the ethanol business for very long knows that one the founding pillars of our industry was the dire need for a more secure energy supply. It all started with the oil embargoes of the 1970s. President Carter, in a major televised speech on the energy crisis in 1979, vowed that “this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977—never,” and ethanol was part of the solution he presented.

Likewise, when President George W. Bush signed the Renewable Fuel Standard into law just over a quarter century later, he spoke of the role renewable fuels would play in this area. “Every time we use a home-grown fuel … we're going to be helping our farmers, and at the same time, be less dependent on foreign sources of energy.”

It was therefore understandably difficult to recently learn that President Biden was calling on the OPEC+ nations to increase oil production as a way of combatting higher fuel prices at the pump. In a letter to the president two days after this announcement, the Renewable Fuels Association made clear our position—a position that many of the president’s predecessors would agree with:

The key to cleaner and more affordable energy for American consumers lies not in the oil fields of Saudi Arabia and Russia, but in the farm fields of our nation's heartland.

We do agree with President Biden that higher gasoline prices threaten to derail our nation’s economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, and we support the administration’s call for an investigation into the true causes of recent higher gas prices. However, rather than hoping Iraq, Iran, Venezuela and other OPEC+ countries will provide the cure to escalating gas prices in the United States, we urge the president to pursue a real and immediate solution to higher pump prices—increased production and use of low-carbon renewable fuels like ethanol. Using more domestically produced ethanol would not only result in lower fuel prices for consumers, but it would also support this administration’s goals related to clean energy, climate change, and jobs.

While some oil refiners continue to falsely claim the RFS somehow increases the cost of gasoline, the facts are clear. Expanded use of ethanol under the RFS has lowered gasoline prices by an average of 22 cents per gallon in recent years, saving the typical American household $250 annually. In recent weeks, gasoline containing just 10 percent ethanol (E10) has typically sold for 30-40 cents per gallon less than gasoline with no ethanol, on average. And by increasing our liquid fuel supply, it helps dampen gasoline price shocks that result from sudden oil market disruptions.

With the right policy and regulatory actions, renewable fuels can do even more to keep pump prices in check, reduce petroleum dependence, and reduce carbon emissions. We encourage the Biden administration to take three steps: Quickly finalize robust RFS volume requirements for 2021 and 2022, take action to ensure consumers have year-round access to gasoline containing 15% ethanol (E15), and work with Congress to ensure upcoming legislation includes the incentives necessary to support increased FFV production and expanded infrastructure for higher ethanol blends like E15 and E85.

U.S. ethanol producers stand ready to work with the Biden administration and Congress to deliver immediate and effective solutions to the challenges posed by high pump prices and our long history of over-reliance on petroleum. Rather than calling on the cartels of the Middle East to solve our problems at the pump, our leaders in Washington should be calling on the farmers of the Midwest.

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S & P Global

Sep 15, 2021

Full electrification of the economy is simply not an attainable goal, former US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said at an industry forum Sept. 15, as he advised policymakers and the private sector to turn more attention to low-to-no-carbon fuels and carbon-negative technologies.

"I believe when you think this through that you reach the conclusion that while electricity and electrification are the lead horse in the decarbonization race, we also need a fuel," Moniz said during a fireside chat at Siemens Energy's North America Energy Week conference.

The economy in general and particularly the hard-to-decarbonize sectors, such as the transportation, industrial and agricultural sectors, will need a fuel source, and there are a number of possibilities if sufficient attention is paid to the issue, Moniz asserted.

Among those possibilities are biofuels, which Moniz said "have been a promise for a long time without fulfilling the promise," as well as newer fuel alternatives such as an emerging class of carbon-neutral electrofuels produced with hydrogen and hydrogen itself.

Renewable Fuels Association members in July pledged to President Joe Biden that ethanol would achieve a net-zero carbon footprint, on average, by 2050 or sooner. Renewable fuel producers on RFA's board further committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from ethanol by at least 70%, on average, compared with gasoline by 2030. Corn ethanol already cuts GHG emissions by about 50% compared to petroleum, according to experts at the departments of Energy and Agriculture, Harvard University, MIT and other institutions.

Deflecting from innovation needs

Moniz warned that statements about full electrification of the economy were deflecting from the need to innovate to usher in significant volumes of low-to-no-carbon fuels at a low cost.

But even with electrification and a green fuel option, the US cannot fully decarbonize the economy, he argued, insisting that direct air capture and other carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies will be necessary to eliminate carbon from dilute sources, namely the atmosphere and the upper layers of the ocean.

He took issue with "detractors who view [CDR] as a focus on offsets and ... a bad thing."

Because CO2 in the atmosphere is a cumulative issue, Moniz said "How you get to net-zero, the trajectory through 2030 and 2040 is very important." Further, "we don't want to stop at net-zero," but continue on to "an economywide negative carbon world," he said, asserting that some are getting too caught up in the net-zero emissions by 2050 mantra.

"You cannot have a net negative economy without negative carbon technologies, and so we should be working on that much, much harder than we are today," Moniz said. "And we should not equate negative carbon technologies just with direct air capture, which is getting a lot of attention and I think is very important, but there are many, many other pathways to negative carbon."

A concerted effort must be made to make those pathways "viable, starting by the end of this decade and growing to a very substantial contribution by midcentury," he said.

DOE's role

Along those lines, if he were back in office at the Department of Energy, he said a top priority, from the energy transition context, would be to steward the energy innovation agenda in the US and abroad, with an emphasis on "stimulating major international collaboration" on the three big pillars for reaching success: electricity, fuel and CDR.

Secondly, he said DOE should take a look at its large-scale demonstration projects and deployment efforts.

"Let's face it, we're fairly desperate to accelerate the pace of change," he said. So things like the DOE loan program, for example, need to play a larger role, he contended.

"Back in the earlier Obama period, one failed loan became a big fiasco," he said. "The reality is the loan program as a portfolio was extremely successful in deploying $30 billion of debt financing and doing its job, starting up some areas, bringing in private capital, and then being able to walk away from them, and letting the private sector do the job."

He pointed to DOE's debt financing of the first five utility-scale solar plants in 2009 and 2010 and how that helped spur 60 or 70 more plants without government backing. "That's the kind of success story that I think we need more of."

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Renewable Fuels Association

Sep 14, 2021

When he arrived at a start-up ethanol plant site in Portales, New Mexico, for the first day on the job as a carpenter, tools in hand, Randy Doyal didn’t know that he wasn’t being hired to build buildings, but to help build an industry.

“I went up and interviewed with the guy in this little kind of ratty trailer,” Doyal recalled. “He said yes, we’re building ethanol plants. I had no idea, And I didn’t care. Do you need a carpenter? Basically, he said yes, we do need a carpenter and we’re building eight one-million-gallon ethanol plants.”

Doyal showed up at 6:45 the next morning, lugging two big toolboxes, and was surprised to be shown all around the one plant on the site that was already operational— “It’s loud, it’s hot, and it smells funny.” And then the surprise came.

“We walked through this little building with all these tanks and pipe and odd equipment. And as we’re entering this small sort of office space that has some very rudimentary lab equipment in it, he says, OK, now go do that. I said, go do what? He said, you’re my cooker. I said no, I’m a carpenter. He goes no, you’re my cooker. I said, no, dude, I am a carpenter. What are you talking about? He said, well, I had someone quit, and they gave you to me. I need a cooker. And I said, you’ve got to be kidding. He said, do you need a job? I said OK.”

From cooking he eventually moved to distilling and then, when the second plant opened, he was on the startup crew. When the third plant was built, that was his to manage. The company was Mountain Development Corp. A short time later, Doyal learned of another, much larger (10 million gallon) ethanol project being built just down the hill in Portales in early 1985. He actually worked as a carpenter on that project and was hired to be a shift supervisor when the plant was nearing completion. It had been built by a company called Energy Fuels Development Corporation. Its president, Ben Henneke, was on the RFA board at the time.

The plant would go through changes of ownership during Doyal’s time there, and in 1995 Doyal and his family made the move a thousand miles northeast from Portales to Claremont, Minnesota, and Al-Corn Clean Fuel, becoming its general manager. Doyal continues at Al-Corn as its CEO and has been an RFA board member since 1995, serving as board chairman in 2015-2016. Last year, Al-Corn celebrated its billionth gallon  of ethanol production.

Among the early challenges Doyal recalls is that the industry, in its youth, did not know how to deal with some of the coproducts of ethanol production—especially during his time at those million-gallon plants in New Mexico.

“We didn’t know what we were doing,” Doyal said, citing one example in particular. “We didn’t really have a plan for the feed that we were producing, because we didn’t think of it as feed. We called it slops. That’s not a good way to think about a feed product. We needed to learn to focus on how we could use this material for the livestock out there. There were a lot of people who could utilize it.”

In Minnesota, Doyal found an industry where plants were more numerous and in closer proximity. The nearest plant to his in Portales at that time, he said, was in Colwich, Kansas.

“When I got up here and saw the ethanol plants that existed and more being built, I thought this should be great,” he said. “But the plants were not working together. So, we started a process here at Claremont to invite all the managers and maintenance folks to look at our plant. We gave them a tour and talked about how we can work together. This was the start of the collaborative nature of much of our industry in Minnesota.”

This idea evolved from sharing spare parts with mechanical breakdowns to looking at improving ethanol marketing, and the creation of RPMG, the Renewable Products Marketing Group. Since its founding in 1996 by Al-Corn and Heartland Corn Products, RPMG now represents 19 plants across seven states.

 “We thought we were doing something big with 20 million gallons to market from our two plants, and now RPMG is doing more than two billion a year,” he said. “Working together as an industry, being open and willing to share what you’re doing, so that people can look at it and see and ask questions. All of us trying to get better. It has helped everybody, and it’s continued to grow.”

His experience with RFA proved valuable in a similar way, Doyal said.

“When I got personally involved in RFA on the board was when I came up here to Minnesota. I saw it as another place where more of the industry was getting together and I got to learn about what else was going on out there, across the country, and what was possible for our industry. It was so much greater to see everybody working together, and I had opportunities to serve on different committees and to go and see what the developments were like—to see how fast all kinds of technologies were being developed. That was incredibly interesting to me.”

Having seen the industry grow over the decades he’s helped build it, Doyal rightly remains bullish on its future.

“Renewable fuels will become even more critical. I don’t consider myself an environmentalist, it’s more about stewardship. Oil is a phenomenally valuable resource that we use, and in all kinds of things, but it’s limited. Replacing that with molecules that we can produce in a sustainable renewable fashion makes perfect sense from the stewardship perspective. I hope that people get that message and understand that, especially as we continue to populate this earth. We’re going to need fuels that can be renewable, produced in a sustainable way and are better for the environment.”

Read the original story here.