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concluded long-term offtake agreements with biofuel suppliers,
most of which are reported as price-competitive. 102 In the United
States, United Airlines began using advanced biofuels for its
regular operations – the first airline in the country to move beyond
demonstration flights and test programmes. 103
In the marine sector, Sweden’s Stena Line launched the world’s
first methanol-fuelled ferry in March 2015. 104 Also in 2015, the
US Navy launched an initiative to deploy alternative fuels in its
operations. This includes a Carrier Strike Group (CSG) that uses
alternative fuels, a contract for 300 million litres of fuel between
October 2015 and September 2016 with AltAir Fuels, and a
grant of USD 210 million to support three firms in the building
of refineries to make biofuels using woody biomass, municipal
solid waste (MSW) and used cooking grease and oil. 105 A portion
of the CSG fuels consists of biofuel made from beef fat, which
is certified as a “drop-in” replacement and requires no engine
modifications or changes to operational procedures. 106
technology providers, research groups and academia to develop
and bring novel processes into full-scale production.
Capacity for producing fuels by hydrogenating vegetable oils
(including used cooking oil (UCO), tall oili and others) increased
significantly in 2015. 95 UPM (Sweden), for example, invested
USD 150 million to develop a plant in Finland on the same site
as the company’s Kaukas pulp and paper mill, which produces
100,000 tonnes of diesel fuel from tall oil annually. 96 In April 2015,
Total (France) announced an investment of some USD 220 million
to convert the La Mède oil refinery in southern France into a
biorefinery that will produce renewable diesel from UCO and
other feedstocks. 97
Several additional cellulosic ethanol manufacturing plants began
production or were announced in 2015, including DuPont’s plant
in the US state of Iowa, which is designed to produce 140 million
litres of ethanol per year, the largest such output in the world. 98
In Brazil, Grandbio and Raizen’s large-scale cellulose ethanol
plants in Alagoas and in São Paulo began operations in 2015 and
are expected to produce respectively 82 and 42 million litres of
cellulosic ethanol annually. 99
Progress also was made in the production of fuels through
pyrolysis and gasification of biomass during 2015. Biomass
Technology Group (Netherlands) opened a 25 MW th pyrolysis
plant to generate electricity and process steam and to produce
fuel oil from woody biomass. 100 In Sweden, the GoBiGas plant in
Gothenburg became fully operational in early 2015 and is one
of the first successful large-scale examples of the production of
methane through the thermal gasification of forest biomass. 101
The process is able to run continuously thanks to developments
that avoid the build-up of tars, a persistent problem in previous
attempts to deploy this technology.
Aviation biofuels took strong strides forward in 2015. By mid-
2015, 22 airlines based in Europe, North America and Asia
had performed more than 2,000 commercial passenger flights
with blends of up to 50% biojet fuel made from used cooking
oil, jatropha, camelina, algae and sugar cane. Several airlines
The development and scale-up of biorefineries – facilities that
can produce several products from biomass, including energy,
chemicals and other valuable products – continued in 2015 with
growing efforts in the United States, Europe, China and, most
recently, India. For example, Godavari Biorefineries (India) raised
more than USD 14 million during the year to increase ethanol
production, while also adding specialty chemical production
capacity. 107
Gaseous Biomass Industry
The biogas sector continued to expand in 2015. Most biogas
production is in the United States and Europe, although other
regions increasingly are deploying the technology as well. 108 In
Europe, the first biogas plant in Macedonia was constructed in
2015. The plant digests cattle waste and has a power generating
capacity of 3 MW. Also during the year, the European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) agreed to provide
USD 32 million for a biogas plant in Ukraine. 109
Anaerobic digestion plants are being deployed more widely to
treat liquid effluents and wastes in Asia, notably in Thailand and
Indonesia, where a range of waste materials – including effluents
from cassava starch production, palm oil processing and ethanol
production, as well as MSW – are being used as feedstocks. 110
For example, in early 2016, the Krabi waste-to-energy project
began operation in Thailand, processing palm oil mill effluent
and producing 12,300 MWh annually, which is exported to the
neighbouring electricity grid. 111
There are signs in Africa of increasing activity in biogas
production, particularly waste-based projects that involve landfill
gas, MSW and agricultural residues. The year 2015 saw the launch
of the Bronkhurstspruit project in South Africa, which produces
4.4 MW of electricity from the digestion of cattle waste and
sells the electricity to a neighbouring industrial plant – the first
such project in the region. 112 In Kenya, a 2.2 MW grid-connected
digester system that uses local crop residues opened in Nakuru
Country. 113 In Dakar, Senegal, animal waste at a slaughterhouse
is digested and used in a CHP system to generate electricity
and heat; it produces 800 MWh of electricity and 1,600 MWh of
thermal energy annually for internal use. 114
02
i Tall oil is a mixture of compounds found in pine trees and is obtained as a byproduct of the pulp and paper industry.
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