Summary of international activities on advanced liquid biofuels

Commercializing conventional and advanced transport biofuels from biomass and other renewable feedstocks

During the last triennium (2016-2018), Task 39 continued its work to advance development and deployment of sustainable, lower carbon liquid biofuels for transport with an overall goal of facilitating the commercialization of both conventional and advanced liquid biofuels from biomass. Through a coordinated focus on technology, commercialization, sustainability, policy, markets and implementation, Task 39’s member countries and other transport biofuels stakeholders worked together to develop and deploy biofuels, with the primary goal of decarbonizing the transport sector. These included conventional biofuels (i.e. ethanol and fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) biodiesel), cellulosic ethanol, renewable diesel (also known as hydrotreated vegetable oils (HVO) or hydrotreated esters and fatty acids (HEFA)), sustainable aviation fuel, sustainable marine fuel, etc., through various processing routes involving oleochemical, biochemical, thermochemical or hybrid conversion technologies. The Task also continued to identify and facilitate opportunities for comparative techno-economic (TEA) and life cycle (LCA) assessments, and to monitor the many policies being used to try to foster increased production and use of biofuels. To a large extent, the Task continues to succeed by providing an international forum for integrated discussions of biofuels-related issues, benefiting from the active involvement of many biofules stakeholders and experts from industry, government and academia...