Impacts of New Technologies and Policies on Biofuels Production and Trade

Several new technologies were evaluated to understand how the biofuels mandate set under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 will be met on the U.S. These technologies include various pathways to produce ethanol from corn dry mill, sugar, cellulosic ethanol using the biochemical pathway as well as biomass to liquids via the Fisher-Tropsch pathway. The Energy Technology Perspectives (ETP) model, a multi-region least-cost optimization energy model, was used in this study. Conversion technology economics and feedstock supply curves in countries most likely to export biofuels to the U.S. were updated in the model to project the U.S. biofuels supply, technology penetration, and global biofuel market dynamics to 2030. Scenarios were used to understand the impact of policy and market uncertainties on global biofuel production, exports, and imports.