Comment by throwawaymaths a day ago
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...
> 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.
My thought is if the plant was on track to success but was killed by corporate politics somebody else would have tried again. The demand for carbon-neutral liquid fuels isn’t going away; long-range shipping and aviation aren’t going to run on batteries.