Renewable diesel is a biofuel made from vegetable oils and animal fats touted by proponents as an almost miraculous “drop-in” transition fuel able to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions while easily replacing fossil diesel in all manner of engines. But this biofuel’s recent sudden surge in production and rapid expansion in applications is alarming environmentalists, […]
  • Renewable diesel (RD), dubbed HVO (hydrotreated vegetable oil) by producers, is hailed by its supporters as a climate-friendly alternative to carbon-intensive fossil diesel. RD is a complex biofuel often made in retooled oil refineries from feedstocks including waste cooking oils, but also problematic animal fats and soy and palm oil.
  • Renewable diesel substitutes easily for fossil diesel, so is touted as a climate-friendly transition fuel. Its use, mostly in vehicles, grew slowly in the past. Now, thanks largely to government-offered green subsidies, production is surging as firms widely expand uses to marine shipping, power plants, heating oil, and data center backup fuel.
  • But critics are skeptical about industry claims of RD life-cycle greenhouse gas emission cuts of up to 95% over fossil fuel-derived diesel. They warn RD carbon releases will surge if renewable diesel sourcing is scaled up, triggering tropical deforestation as producers convert forests to energy crops, such as oil palm and soy.
  • As the renewable diesel industry expands beyond Europe and the U.S., analysts warn it will be a false climate solution unworkable at scale, so production and use should be constrained. Independent monitoring is also needed to track feedstock supply chains to assure crops don’t have high carbon intensities or cause deforestation.
    • ToastedRavioli@midwest.social
      4·
      17 days ago

      Apparently biodiesel can be made from algae, which could actually work well. Mass farm algae, which can absorb a lot of co2, use some of it to make biodiesel, but overall grow way more algae. Either way though it has a lot of input options of things that are mostly waste as it stands now

      I think one of the major benefits is not shipping raw oil and finished fuel all over the world. This is something sustainable, but more importantly domestically viable. Just not shipping oil all the way here from the middle east or Venezuela or wherever is an improvement.

      Plus, in a dark side type way, we can sell our own domestic petroleum products to other countries a la Norway

      At this point we really just need some stop gaps to get us to a point where some renewable has a more major breakthrough. Be it fusion or solar panel efficiency or geothermal or battery tech or whatever have you