In Florida, the Digest today releases its annual review of biofuels mandates and targets around the world, looking at the state of biofuels mandates in 64 countries.
The bulk of mandates continue to come from the EU-27, where the Renewable Energy Directive (RED) specified a 10 percent renewable content by 2020 but has been scaled back to the 5-7.5 percent range.
13 countries in the Americas have mandates or targets in place or under consideration, 12 in Asia-Pac, 11 in Africa and the Indian Ocean, and 2 from non-EU countries in Europe.
Besides the EU, the major blending mandates that will drive global demand are those set in the US, China and Brazil – each of which has set targets – or, in the case of Brazil, is already there – at levels in the 15-27 percent range by 2020-2022.
Are Mandates a thing of the past?
Lux Research thinks so. A report out from Lux in December 2016 concluded that “a new generation of policies is based on technology-agnostic carbon intensity metrics, led by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) Low-Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS). Renewable diesel and conventional electricity will be the near-term winners according to the “Identifying Winners in Low-Carbon Fuels” report, said lead author Yuan-Sheng Yu. The next big winner? Renewable electricity, he said.
We don’t believe that mandates are quite so outdated, on the international front, with enhanced mandates in Queensland, Finland, Norway, Vietnam, India, Indonesia, Argentina and Brazil in the past year. But we certainly see the popularity of low carbon fuel standards, and Canada moving in that direction.
However, California is a model for low carbon standards. Currently, California uses seven different low-carbon fuels derived from 26 different feedstocks, making up 11.3% of its fuel consumption. Under the state’s new regulations, growth of petroleum consumption has slowed to a mere 0.5% quarterly, while low-carbon fuels grew at 1.6% quarterly.
