Advocating Advanced Biofuels

Biomass Magazine
July 2010
By Anna Austin

With their extreme versatility and often complicated nature, it isn’t easy for most people to wrap their brain around advanced biofuels, and the definitions in the renewable fuels standard 2 (RFS2) aren’t much help.

When Congress released RFS2, which was signed into law in December 2007 as part of the Energy, Independence & Security Act of 2007, biofuel volume requirements were separated into three categories: advanced biofuels, cellulosic biofuels and biomass-based diesel. An advanced biofuel is defined as a renewable fuel—other than ethanol derived from corn starch—that is derived from renewable biomass and achieves a 50 percent greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction. A cellulosic biofuel is defined as a renewable fuel derived from any cellulose, hemicellulose or lignin that is derived from renewable biomass achieving a 60 percent GHG emission reduction. The potentially perplexing factor is that some cellulosic biofuels won’t meet the 60 percent GHG threshold but will meet the 50 percent threshold, and will therefore count as an advanced biofuel. In addition, though biomass-based diesels are advanced biofuels, the advanced biofuel quantity is reserved for biofuels outside of the cellulosic biofuel and biomass-based diesel subsets, such as sugarcane ethanol.

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