Comment by throwawaymaths a day ago
yes I'm aware. in that era, which was last i tracked this field, BP had a pilot plant that reached commercial and greenhouse breakeven, but then they lost the deepwater horizon case and scuttled their biofuels research, I'd be surprised if no one caught up. did no one catch up?
> somebody else would have tried again.
Yes. I would think that too. But the market isn't efficient, VCS are definitely not efficient, and it takes a lot of capital to spin up a factory, and the number of qualified people to run this factory is probably in the hundreds worldwide. Also ppl who worked on it in the past might be burned out, or not have access to key IP... Hundreds of things could get in the way
‘Demand’ in this sense is driven by economics + politics.
Nothing is going to beat fossil fuels on pure economics, so then we’re left with what political pressure will be applied and how much to make other options economic enough.
Biofuels are so marginal, it’s unlikely they’re going to ‘win’ as they would require exceptional political pressure and excluding a lot of other options.
this is as much evidence as i can find on the internet that this was a thing, i cant remember where i heard that it was breakeven:
> BP sought to experiment with ways to turn corncobs, sugarcane and other agricultural waste into biofuel
https://www.nola.com/news/business/bp-shutters-biofuel-plant...