How 9/11 changed the world, and biofuels

9/11 put energy security front and center of the political agenda.

It also inspired the development of exotic biofuels feedstocks and technologies, and expanded the field of end-use customers, investors and geographies.

Whether it is in the way people experience air travel, applying for a passport, go through background checks, or just how we talk about life and pursue happiness, 9/11 changed a lot of things.

One of the biggest changes has been in how nations view security, and the nature of threats,. 9/11 has really shaken up thinking about energy security. Sending dollars to nefarious regimes for oil & gas purchases has been going on for a long time, as has diverting huge amounts of military effort to guarding the sea lanes for energy. It’s been growing in scope for more than a generation – and in almost every election cycle, there has been a lot of talk about energy security and an end to imported oil.

But 9/11 changed the the energy security paradigm from a cycle of “talk big – act little – cancel fast” that marked the 1970s, 80s and 90s, to a cycle of “advance, retreat, and advance again”. There’s a new doggedness in the grinding search for energy security. In the halls of government, tenacious leaders like Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, backed by former corn belt Senator Barack Obama, have been pushing, nudging and shoving energy security into a new framework of chasing down gallons, as opposed to chancing down dreams.

Before Obama, the Bush Administration dug in and doggedly pushed through two major renewable energy bills in 2005 and 2007, and established the Renewable Fuel Standard.

Changing the sense of urgency

Concerns about emissions, and excitement about bioenergy as a rural economic strategy, had been around for a long time. It was 9/11 that changed the equation – by changing the tenor of the dialogue on energy security from a “nice to have” to a “must-have”. Putting together the triad of the three Es – emissions, economic development and energy security, that have propelled biofuels forward.

The US government becomes an early-stage customer, and investor as the feedstock set expands

But 9/11 did far more than re-frame the dialogue. It turned the US government from an R&D dollar purveyor to an activist customer and an investor in capacity. It is energy security that led to the Presidential finding this year that invoked the Defense Production Act and obtained $510M for advanced biofuels commercialization.

And 9/11 did more than change government’s sense of urgency. By framing the US military as an early-stage customer, and by establishing large mandates to close the gap on imported oil in a meaningful way, the government forced the nation to turn to advanced biofuels. There simply wasn’t going to be enough corn and soy to supply 30 percent of US fuel needs and close the import gap.  The advances on cellulosic biofuels, and new feedstocks such as algae – are almost entirely due to 9/11 and the changes it wrought.

The rise of drop-in fuels

But there’s more. The military wasn’t going to be a customer for first generation ethanol and biodiesel – they need drop-in diesel and jet fuel. That has expanded the field – because the US needs more than great companies like POET and Renewable Energy Group – it needs the drop-in fuels provided by the likes of Solazyme, Amyris, Gevo, LS9, LanzaTech, Sapphire Energy, and Cobalt Technologies, to name a few.

Expanding the field of investors

Those needs also have helped to jump-start companies that can bring in or step-up investors like Waste Management, L’Oreal, Procter & Gamble, Darling, Dow, Total, BP, and Dupont, whose ambitions range far beyond traditional fuels and feedstocks. The investment field has been expanded too.

Expanding the geography to damaged land and residue streams

And today, we talk in terms of brackish water, damaged land, residues and waste streams like CO2, animal fats, sawmill waste, bagasse, corn stover and municipal solid waste. When we look at traditional crops, it is with genetic enhancements that make them extremophilic. We talk about projects in the deserts of Australia and the Middle East, the damaged forests of Canada, and the denuded pasturelands of Brazil or Africa.

Feedstocks, technologies, end-use customers and geographies. Far-ranging indeed have the impacts of 9/11 been. Demonstrating that those people who were determined to extract something positive out of the heartbreaking individual and national tragedies of 9/11, have done good work.

The whole earth as their memorial

The loved ones that were lost have not died in vain – in response to their suffering, the United States and other nations have begun the hard work of actually making a better world, instead of waiting for the world to change. It may feel like the world is taking a very long time to get to the future – the tough day to day work of transforming the energy platform, demonstrates exactly why leaders of the 80s and 90s were unwilling to tackle the 50-year challenge before. In a world of iPads, TV and 24-hour news cycles, people are addicted to instant gratification.

It’s been a very long time since anything as difficult as replacing the energy system has been carried out. Go read Dickens for a good look at how jolly the transition to steam and coal was. Or, jolly events like World War One and Two demonstrate how difficult the transition to oil really was, and how it destabilized the world security structure. It isn’t any easier this time around – but we have a “never again” event to catalyze the work, just as Pearl Harbor filled that role in an earlier time.

And that is a precious thing to have.

Pericles said that “heroes have the entire earth as their memorial, and in lands far from their own, there is enshrined in every heart a record that needs no monument to preserve it.”

The world beyond 9/11 – energy security, economic opportunity, and a cleaner, safer, better world for all. That would be a monument worthy of the sacrifices of ten years ago this Sunday.