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Speakers
John Cooper
Director General, FuelsEurope & Concawe
Preeti Jain, Director
Business Development & Government Relations, LanzaTech
Devin O’Grady
Director, Fuel for the Canadian Fuels Association
Moderator
Gerard Ostheimer
Co-Manager, Clean Energy Ministerial Biofuture Campaign
GERARD OSTHEIMER: Well, good morning, everybody. I’m going to speak so loud that everybody can hear me through the ceiling here, so we can recruit some more people.
Recruit some more people to the future of refining! That’s right. That’s right.
So as you all know, 2015 we had the monumental Paris Agreement. At that time, people were feeling very confident that electrification was going to drive the decarbonization agenda. I think that in the last seven to eight years, we’re starting to see a little bit more of a reality-based approach and a deeper understanding of how much fossil carbon is throughout the entire economy. And so if we’re going to decarbonize, obviously, there’s a couple ways that we can go. We can produce an alternative fuel or chemical… pathway and then blend it with a fossil product, and over time, maybe we can make more of that material. But recently people have been thinking about another pathway, which is to produce not necessarily a refined molecule but to produce a crude, either through direct air capture or by a bio-based method where you could produce a carbon stream that could then meet fossil carbon at the point of refining. And from that system, you could then produce all of the fuels and chemicals that we use today.
And we’re lucky to be joined today by three, maybe four, depending on our virtual participation, but three people at least that are leading the way.
So we have John Cooper, who’s the director general for FuelsEurope. And his membership is obviously the refiners of Europe, and so we’re very lucky to have him and to have his perspective on this topic.
We’re joined by Preeti Jain from a leading industrial biotechnological company called LanzaTech. LanzaTech has almost a hybrid solution but definitely a biotech solution that’s leveraging the power of industrial biotechnology to pull carbon out of intense gaseous streams and then repurpose that carbon into the circular carbon economy.
And then we’re also joined on screen by Devin O’Grady. Devin, I actually—when I first met him, he was working with Natural Resources Canada but now he is a member of the Canadian Fuels Association, which is a collection of Canadian refiners…
And so without further delay, I’m just going to start peppering our panel with questions, but what I wanted to say is that we are a small group and we are in a small room and so if anybody at any point in time feels compelled to ask a question or to say anything really interesting, we would like to hear it. So, for example, I think we all agree—I will stop talking in a second—we all agree that the future is we want as many renewable electrons as possible, we want as much low-carbon carbon and low-carbon-emissions hydrogen as possible, and so we imagine a systemic, holistic approach. And so we don’t have anybody here on the panel expert in hydrogen, we don’t have anybody here that’s an expert in, say, natural gas, and so if there’s somebody here that wants to add something, please do, so don’t hesitate.
But the first question, just to get us going, is I want to appeal to everybody’s expertise and so I’m going ask the same question of everybody, which is, please give us an update from either your part of the world or your sector, so I’m asking John to give him his views on the very fluid situation policy-wise in Europe. I’m going to ask the same question of Devin, and then for Preeti, from her position, industrial biotechnology, to get her take on how LanzaTech is actually implementing solutions in the real world.
So I have to hand this microphone to the next speaker, even though it doesn’t work for this room, but it’s necessary for the recording.
So John, your views on Fit For 55, transportation, liquid fuels.
JOHN COOPER: Yeah, thank you, Gerry. And I’ll stand just so it’s easier for you to hear me.
So yeah, John Cooper. FuelsEurope is the business association for all of the refining companies in Europe—40 companies, 80 refineries, we figure around 50 million customers every day. And in fact, almost everything that moves in Europe, with the exception of electric trains and some electric cars, are powered with the products that we make. We’re also in—you described it as a fluid political situation; I would say it was more of an electric political situation. Excuse the pun. Europe has got very, very strong policies and a strong political consensus to really be a climate leader and have put in place a law that requires climate neutrality by 2050. Now, I’m quite tempted to draw a graph for you on the flipchart. I’ll resist. But it is simply a collection of wedges that go down to zero in 2050. It is the carbon budget that the European Commission have described and is their reference point for every law that they make from now on. And for us, we’ve had a difficult and deep conversation with our members to say, look, you’re in this sector that is currently a very significant part of the energy sector and the carbon budget allowable for that sector, transport, actually goes to actual zero. It’s not a net zero where there’s a positive and some offset; it’s an actual zero. And we’re being told that that is the reference point for every policy that is made.
Now, it’s clear: Electrification with renewable electricity can be a big part of that, but we’re also clear that liquids needs to be a part of it too, and our starting point for our work was actually the liquid products we have today are outstanding in terms of their qualities, in terms of their fit-for-purpose in all the different transports, and so we set ourselves a task of finding every technology you can deploy to make broadly similar products for cars, trucks, aviation, and maritime. And in fact, if you look at our work, we’ve got five key technology groups. You start with the first generation, existing biofuels we’ve got; then you go into advanced forms of biomass conversion to scale up significantly using wastes and residues, going further; and then finally, using electricity for making e-fuels or synthetic fuels, and the manufacturing processes would all be using carbon capture and storage and green hydrogen, and renewable electricity to get you there as well.
We’ve done the maths, how much you can make. We can make, by 2050, around 150 million tons a year, which is not enough to replace petroleum. Petroleum today is 350, so we’re about a third of what today’s petroleum volumes are—
GERARD OSTHEIMER: For Europe.
JOHN COOPER:—for Europe, and that’s using predominantly European feedstocks and that’s supported by academic work which shows those feedstocks are available. You need strong policies to get you there. And in terms of carbon pricing and pricing the difference between a renewable and a petroleum fuel, we already have carbon pricing close to 100 euros a ton of carbon, but in fact, the hidden price signals in renewables blending and vehicle regulations are 500 euros a ton of carbon plus, and that is actually enough to make the investments to do this possible.
I’ll stop there. I could go a lot further, but it’s time for me to hand over—
GERARD OSTHEIMER: Off to Preeti and then Devin.
PREETI JAIN: Thanks, Gerry. And thanks to Atlantic Council for giving us this opportunity to be here. I’m from LanzaTech and we are the leader in sustainable fuels and chemicals. Those of you who don’t know about LanzaTech, we are a carbon-capture and transformation company and we do believe that every carbon needs a second chance. When I say every carbon needs a second chance, our technology takes waste carbon from industrial off-gasses, agri residue, or municipal solid waste, and with our proprietary microbe—which is a biocatalyst—we convert that into fuel ethanol.
And I’m happy to share with this audience how—that our technology has been commercialized at scale. We have two commercial units running in China using industrial off-gasses from steel mills, converting that into ethanol. And we have two units—one in India, one in Europe—with ArcelorMittal and Indian Oil coming up online this year. We have seven units under construction and seven units in the advanced stages of engineering.
I wish we would have more people because we are talking about future of refining, because in terms of addressable market size, gentlemen and ladies, we are talking about around US dollar 1 trillion market size of sustainable fuels and chemicals. So it’s the right time we start looking into this direction. And at LanzaTech we are helping industry partners to help meet their net-zero commitments and make the transition. Where we see that in future, the carbon will not be coming from under the ground but the waste carbon which is available above the ground can be a source of products we use in our daily life.
So I will stop there, Gerry, for this part of question.
GERARD OSTHEIMER: Hand off to Devin.
DEVIN O’GRADY: Of course. Thanks.
So I think in terms of a Canadian update here, over the last five years now under development has been the Canadian Clean Fuel Standard, which is like a California low-carbon fuel standard, so it is a performance-based regulatory approach whereby obligated parties much reduce the carbon intensity of their fossil transport products out to 2030 in this case. So it’s been a long journey in this regulatory development but this policy is driving actions from CFA’s members across the board, and kind of as John alluded to before, there are a number of pathways and we know there’s not just going to be a one-size-fits-all, so whether it’s electrification or, as Gerry mentioned before, hydrogen, and of course, low-carbon fuels, like biofuels.
So there are several compliance pathways that are available to meet the Clean Fuel Standard, one of which is blending low-carbon fuels, and that’s where our members are seeing a lot of action there and taking initiatives. It’s really, you know, driving our activities and our thoughts as we go along in terms of where and how and timing-wise are we going to make these investments in these types of fuels. So jurisdiction plays a key role. You know, items are—key factors such as feedstock, sustainable feedstock, and partnerships with other entities as well, collaborating on technology. So in terms of when these regulations are expected to come into force, we expect final regulations to be published this June, so, you know, in the coming months, and then they’ll be coming into force likely by the end of this year.
So, you know, with that, it’s critical that a number of tools are available for the successful implementation, so there’s a number of pieces that are kind of part of the regulations, so in terms of sustainable feedstocks, there’s a land-use and biodiversity criteria, there’s, of course, a credit trading market, and I think most—or one of the most important elements, and this kind of can lead into our discussion around carbon accounting, is the fuel life cycle assessment model, which will be used to calculate the carbon intensities of the low-carbon materials.
So I think I can stop there and we can get onto—
GERARD OSTHEIMER: Actually, Devin, if you could, we don’t have the chance to show slides but could you say who some of your members are?
DEVIN O’GRADY: Yeah, absolutely. So we represent refiners from coast to coast, across the country. Our membership consists of Suncor, Imperial Oil, Shell, Irving, Federated Co-op. You know, there’s… I won’t list them all but—
GERARD OSTHEIMER: OK, yeah.
DEVIN O’GRADY: But there’s a number of them and—
GERARD OSTHEIMER: I just wanted people to know that you cover a range of companies from sort of startup companies with new tech, like LanzaTech—I don’t think LanzaTech is a member but—like Enerkem and stuff like that, all the way up to big oil companies, and so that’s the range of the producer-refiner sector is in the Canadian Fuels Association. And so you would say that your membership sees the future and supports a carbon-intensity-based approach to valuing their product.
DEVIN O’GRADY: Yeah, absolutely, and I think in November 2021, we released a document called “Driving To 2050,” which is sort of like a road map that lays out not the fine pathways but examples of pathways and where our members are heading in order to support the government of Canada’s ambitions for net zero in 2050. And actually, today the government of Canada will be releasing its new Emissions Reduction Plan, which is going to outline their, kind of, vision and targets to 2030, in this case, for a stronger ambition in terms of reduction of emissions by 2030, so we’re eagerly awaiting that and we think the Clean Fuel Standard will be a big part of that and low-carbon fuels hopefully as well.
GERARD OSTHEIMER: Great. Thanks. Chris from ADNOC asks the question of—how is—what is this—how is this going to work? Like, what are the technologies that has to happen? Are we talking about changing the nature of the refinery infrastructure? How are we going to fit these different crudes actually into the refineries?
John, are you comfortable taking that question?
JOHN COOPER: The answer’s brutal. In Europe, you look at the carbon budget that is being given for transport. That is the reference point for what is being given to vehicle CO2 regulation. And what’s on the table at the moment is a ban on the internal combustion engine in cars and light vans from 2035. It’s not in law yet, but it’s got a good chance of getting there. Trucks will be a little bit after that, but that means, actually by 2050, you model the demand; the demand is right down in petroleum terms, all right? And so I can’t predict and I’m leading a business association of competitors, all right, and so it’s not my job—
GERARD OSTHEIMER: Could you mention your members?
JOHN COOPER: Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, Total, Eni, Repsol. You name it, they’re a member, right, every single refiner in Europe. And they’ve all been through this. They all realize that it is absolutely the intent of the regulator to make sure that the demand in road transport is way down from where it is today, and so that means a very substantial reduction in European refining capacity between now and 2050. We would expect significant changes downwards, even by 2030.
There are some biorefinery conversions. Typically you end up with a far smaller throughput because you’ve got higher upgrading. You go three times through a hydrogen unit or whatever. Along the way, we’re actually starting to see a shift back towards gasoline, between the gasoline and diesel balance, and that’s partly because of early diesel bans in cities in many European countries, certainly in the northwest. So the mix of the products is changing, but the trajectory can only be that way. The model doesn’t rely on a complete fleet turnover to—eventually to electric cars. Right now the policies are going in place to deliver that. So for Europe, it’s brutal and we realize that that’s different from the rest of the world. It opens up other opportunities to do different technologies, but in traditional petroleum refining, it’s inexorably downwards.
PREETI JAIN: Yeah, if I can add to it. It’s a great question and very valid point. For example, I’ll just share one example, the way we’re working with the refining industry. So in the refining process there are industrial off-gasses which are rich in emissions, right, and refiners want to reduce their carbon footprints. So in one of our project with Indian Oil, which is a leading oil company in India, we are working with them so we are taking this refinery off-gasses and the process is converting those refinery off-gasses into product ethanol. Now, that ethanol is being blended at their refinery terminal within their premises, so it is helping them to limit their carbon footprints and also energy security.
Also, the other thing which you mentioned, how it is within the refining industry. India has a very ambitious ethanol road map and the genesis of that road map has been emerged from the point that we need to, you know, limit our imports of the crude; we need to be more self-sufficient so that refiners can produce that kind of ethanol from—and then they can use that for blending.
So, yeah, I would stop there.
GERARD OSTHEIMER: No, that’s great.
So Devin, if you will, and you have your—some points about your issue around the carbon intensity and the impact of how we’re going to do that scoring. That is the next topic, so we’ll get to that. Anyway, so, Devin, if you could.
DEVIN O’GRADY: Sure. I think I share a lot of the same views that were just mentioned. You know, we don’t have a prediction of exactly what things are going to look like. I think it’s safe to say it’s going to be a mixed bag, and that depends also on kind of the speed and how policies are finalized over time as to how these different pathways or solutions are going to come into play.
I would say, you know, in terms of we are trying to leverage our assets in terms of infrastructure as best as possible. These are—you know, these are—have a great deal of investment in them and we want to see them used, so whether that is through coal processing and bio-feedstocks or converting to a renewable diesel facility, or adding one on site next to a refinery site. You can leverage pieces of infrastructure, whether that’s hydrogen electricity.
And then I’d also make the point that—you know, and I think this goes to every jurisdiction but especially in Canada where we cover a wide area, you know, we have different strengths in terms of, you know, feedstocks as well as if there’s basins for storing CO2. So our members are looking to what works best for them in that particular region, so whether it’s using canola or soy feedstocks in the western regions or out east where you don’t have that same kind of feedstock benefit or CO2 storage capacity. So, you know, members are kind of weighing these options, as well, as they move forward with looking at their different potential plans. So, one other factor to consider.
GERARD OSTHEIMER: Great. And so that actually brings us to the—sort of the heart of the matter. That actually brings us to the heart of the matter and this was absolutely fascinating to me was yesterday how many people in different sessions independently brought up the need for better carbon budgeting, carbon management, and carbon intensity, right? And so I really wish that Regina from KPMG was in the room. I should have gone out and tackled her and brought her in here. But it’s very clear that—and then you brought up your own ideas and so something that I learned at this conference is I did not appreciate that different fossil products have different life cycle assessments, and if you’ve tracked the alternative fuel space for a long time, every biofuel producer in the world has made this argument: We want to compete on a level playing field. And so it’s fascinating—and I’m sure that there are plenty of biofuel producers who would like to slug it out with different fossil producers, right, but one of the strengths of existing California regulation is the fact that California rewards all reductions in carbon intensity. So, for example, if somebody improves the efficiency of their refinery, they get credit—they get money for that improvement, right? And I don’t know the technical details of the hydrocracker or which of the different chemical processes—my degree is in molecular biology so I need to revisit my chemistry. I know; it’s criminal. But what I do know is that CARB, the California Air Resources Board, has a thousand people working there and they are working hard to ensure that every technology improvement is properly recorded for the California market. I’m not saying that the California approach is the best and the only approach, but I give the California regulatory approach a lot of credit for learning on the fly and for improving what they’ve been doing. And so what I want to say is that a world in which every fuel molecule is tracked and its carbon budget is monitored perhaps through blockchain or some other activity, to where we actually understand in real time what our emissions are, that might be our future. And so something that needs to happen is that—and this is why I’m glad that we have this audience here—if anything, what we’re missing maybe an old-school—maybe I’ll play that role—an old-school original biofuel producer, but everybody in this community recognizes, whether it’s the refiners, whether it’s the industrial biotech, whether it’s the ag side—Devin was just mentioning canola—the need for this kind of accounting. And so I see a new interface between the oil sector and the alternative fuel sector that was not necessarily there until very recently.
OK, so that said, I’m going to now move on to the third part, which is the part about carbon intensity. So yeah, John, you weren’t here yesterday, but as I just said, a lot of people independently started talking about carbon intensity of hydrogen, carbon intensity of natural gas, carbon intensity of renewable natural gas, carbon intensity of different crudes form different places and how they’re refined. Is your membership working through the maths on this—you know, I know that one of your reports mentioned that the amount of investment that needed to happen over the next 20 years to ensure an improving and viable refinery infrastructure—could you tell us where your membership is on this idea of carbon accounting, and are there people that we don’t know about—or, in particular, I don’t know about—that are maybe already leading the way on this?
JOHN COOPER: How long have we got?
OK, so our membership, and actually our science organization, Concawe, is adjoined to fuel-zero, has done a huge amount of work in this area, and it’s just important to note that life cycle accounting is actually very tricky. A real expert I worked with for some years once said to me the key skill with life cycle accounting is to choose the answer that you want and then work out how to get to that answer, which was, of course, a very cynical thing to say, but it does underline that actually there’s a lot of choices you have to make, in the history of making something, that you have to allocate or not allocate. You think if a forest is deforested and then you grow crops, do you allocate the deforestation to those crops for the next 100 years, or do you not? Do you allocate that deforestation to the timber market that it went to? Choices where there’s no right answer, right?
Life cycle analysis and carbon accounting is absolutely a key part of European politics. Important to note that there are three areas, if you’re talking about refining: scope 1, which is the emissions associated with producing the crude oil; scope 2, the emissions from the refinery; scope 3, the emissions from using the products. In Europe, 2 and 3 are regulated and they’re trying to do 1 as well. And the funny thing is is that it’s not a consistent carbon price. Policymakers tend to use carbon prices to, firstly, punish things they don’t like and, B, reward things that they do like, and they tend to give even bigger carbon prices for things that they do like. We’ve got in Europe at the moment around 80 to 90 euros for stationary source emissions from power stations and refineries, but in terms of things that policymakers do like, like electric vehicles, effective carbon prices at least 500 euros a ton.
GERARD OSTHEIMER: That’s not fair.
JOHN COOPER: No, it isn’t fair and it’s extremely patchy, so you can’t just turn up and say, oh, I’ve made this change in my production in my oil, I expect to get a high carbon-price reward for that. You’ve got to look carefully. What policy does it fit into? And right now in Europe, it wouldn’t fit into any of them. So changing the carbon intensity of your crude oil production in another country outside of Europe would give you no difference at all in the value of your crude oil. However, if you did it in Europe, you’re actually paying for your carbon emissions if you’re doing it in a European field, in European waters, so you would save on your carbon costs in European waters. But you’re only going to get there if you’ve got carbon pricing in your own country of production. It’s really complicated and I’m really sorry I can’t draw you pictures to do that.
GERARD OSTHEIMER: Preeti, is a regulator’s understanding sufficiently rewarded? Do you mind talking about that?
PREETI JAIN: Yeah. Yeah. Yes, I would say—before I talk about that, I would say carbon accounting, which you brought in, is very important because when I take a step back and I look at the basic premise of carbon accounting is you need transparency in that system so that you can see the efforts you are looking to reduce the emissions. They can be visibly seen. And at LanzaTech, we are a net-negative emission technology because we are taking waste emissions which would have gone into the atmosphere or we are taking waste carbon and agri residue and MSW and converting that into ethanol. So we’re LC on the—LC in terms of our footprints are significantly lower, I would say.
Some examples I can quote. In the case of biomass, using biomass, 60 to 70 percent lower. So it means we are helping these companies to limit their carbon footprints.
And if I see LanzaTech as a solution for the industrial sector, which is right now having a challenge to reduce almost 12 gigaton of emissions out there, so with steel sector, with refining sector, with our technology we are helping them to reduce their carbon footprints. Where we see that role of accounting, it will be very important. That will help them to clearly show that adopting these technologies is helping them to limit their carbon footprint. So that is my view.
GERARD OSTHEIMER: Thanks.
Devin, where is your membership in terms of thinking about accounting? And obviously Canada must have gone through some process to come up with some policy around this, right?
DEVIN O’GRADY: Yeah, I think, similar to John’s point, it is very complicated and we see that very clearly just, again, across Canada. You know, a number of the provinces have had their own systems, whether it’s a straight kind of renewable fuel blend mandate, and of course, British Columbia had its own—has its own low-carbon fuel standard and they all use different versions of LCA models and different, you know, considerations for setting the carbon-intensity values. So it is very much kind of a patchwork approach, and now we’ve got this entirely new fuel LCA model that has been developed for use at the national level under the Clean Fuel Standard. So that’s, you know, it’s going to have variations on the carbon intensities, and what you’re going to possibly see is one fuel is valued a lot more in one jurisdiction than another and that gets back to data choices, modeling assumptions, and just even sometimes the platform for which they’re built around. So that’s going to be, I think, a big learning experience over the next several years as, you know, our members get used to working with the new model and working through the new regulation itself.
So I think those kind of changes and differences really also impact investment decisions, and so, you know, we really need kind of a consistent, predictable approach so that you can plan out your investments over the next five, 10 years, and you’re not caught, all of a sudden, with a fuel that’s not valued at what you thought you were going to be receiving in terms of a credit and a dollar per ton. And so, you know, the example of using—you know, avoiding methane emissions and getting kind of a negative CI score, there’s—you know, we’re kind of seeing some considerations around that even because some jurisdictions are choosing to put in policies that, well, you can now—you know, your landfills now have to include kind of methane capture. And so how does that impact your CI score? You might not get that same benefit of avoided emissions and all the sudden the CI score is not the same benefit. So it’s these kind of policies that can just kind of come up as, you know, over the course of time, and how that impacts your compliance pathways really makes a difference, in material, in terms of investment decisions.
PREETI JAIN: One point to build on that. I would say I have seen that carbon accounting still sees… all those things innovative traditional approach. They need to start looking into LC for the technologies like LanzaTech. For example, we also use our ethanol to make carbon-smart products. So ethanol is a carbon and an energy carrier, and for every one ton of carbon-smart products we produce almost two tons of CO2 is being removed out of atmosphere. And carbon accounting and LC metallurgy as of now are not really clearly, you know, measuring those kind of, you know, benefits which other technology is providing. So they need to be more open, I would say, going forward to support these technologies.
GERARD OSTHEIMER: Thank you.
Did we answer your questions, to the best—you’re comfortable? You’re comfortable with the question? OK. OK.
So basically, I think what you’re touching on is, there are big questions. There are really big questions, and I think we recognize those big questions. There needs to be movement and leadership at all levels, right, so we have people in the provincial, at the sub-national level doing work, we have people at the member state level doing work, but there needs to be this push internationally on this topic so that, you know, a country like UAE can make that argument so then that could influence how China thinks about it, right, because let’s be—you know, we’ve been talking about Europe, we’ve been talking about North America, talking about India. We need to see real movement from a lot of the big emitters. We need them to think deeply about this and to get them on board. So we talk about—you know, people are talking about Paris and the need for action after Paris. I’m beginning to think that we need to figure this out. There’s a reason why action hasn’t happened is we haven’t figured this out yet. You know, there’s a reason that we don’t have, like, a general price on carbon because of this complexity and this heterogeneity.
So we’ll end at half past so we have about nine minutes and I just thought that I would let—I would ask a bit of a bonus question, right, so obviously there is a—the terrible invasion of Ukraine has upset fossil fuel markets and I think it’s an open question as to whether people will—whether this activity and this new focus on energy security will accelerate the uptake of renewables or slow the uptake of renewables, and so I’ll just let people answer that and then we can go off and have dinner, cocktails, et cetera. So same order, so John, do you think that upheaval in the Eurasian fossil fuel market will accelerate the uptake of renewables?
JOHN COOPER: First, I guess, let’s start by saying this genuinely is, I think, a shock to the politics of the energy world. And certainly, I think I can say what’s happening in Europe. There is a clear political consensus developing for Europe to become more energy independent, certainly more energy independent from Russia, as specifically been said.
First thing I’ll say is clearly there’s more that can be done to produce more renewable fuels, but we have to, in the very short term, be observing the fact that there’s also a grains crisis developing in the world with the loss of—potentially the loss of this year’s production of Ukraine and Russian grains. And so that cannot impact available food in the world.
One of the things that we have learned again, of course, is the resilience of a liquid fuels system, how quickly it can adapt to move liquid fuels to where it’s needed and the fact that we have many more options in Europe to supply crude oil than we have gas. It’s simply a more flexible system. And so we have learned again I think just how resilient the liquid system is. Longer term, I do believe it will help the case for renewables. It will also give some additional spur for further electrification in Europe. I think that’s inevitable. The politics of energy are very going in that direction now. Yeah
PREETI JAIN: I think geopolitics of energy has always been in discussion since centuries, but I would say, on the recent situation, what you highlighted, Gerry. When it comes to India, because I belong there, we see that over 90 percent—we are 90 percent reliant on the imports, and the situation I would say there may be, you know, temporary reliefs or discounts, but the situation is a wake-up call; also, that we start looking into diversity of the energy basket where waste carbon can also be a mainstream channel. It can be channelized in a better way. Our policies are very open as well as advanced biofuel recycled carbon is there but they can be more conducive so that it can be a significant contributor to overall energy security and climate commitments by reducing carbon footprints, so I would make that statement. Yeah. Thank you.
GERARD OSTHEIMER: And Devin?
DEVIN O’GRADY: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it comes back to, like we said, a resilient and reliable supply system. I think, you know, prior to this, this global event, even within Canada earlier this winter we had a huge issue with big floods on our west coast and wiped away a lot of infrastructure, and so we saw that there is that resiliency and the ability of the traditional liquid fuel sector to step up and supply. But we also saw that whereas our refiners make a blend stock, you know, they are dependent on getting that ethanol supply, and so, you know, how we move forward and how we kind of build out our future supply systems, we have to take into account many of these, I think, different factors, in terms of being able to have both, you know, continue with the liquid, traditional liquid fossil side, as well as build out that low-carbon supply, as we said, getting back to energy security and being able to hopefully, you know, become kind of a global leader in this space and look to export where applicable.
GERARD OSTHEIMER: Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Devin.
I’m going to give everybody one last comment and then we’ll be done.
JOHN COOPER: Thanks. So I managed to just take a few minutes today to share with you what does a refinery strategy actually look like to get to net-zero by 2050? Often—and it’s not the first time I’ve had reactions from people where they say to me, you must be mad or you must be crazy. We actually have done the works example of what it looks like. I didn’t give the number before. It looks like 650 billion in investment for Europe alone, and that’s the capital, and then you do end up with a fuel that is significantly more expensive as well. But it is the works example of actually what it takes. Europe’s deadly serious to do that. It can only work, actually, if the businesses and the policymakers work together, because at the end of the day, every one of those projects is a billion euros and steel and concrete in the ground and it’s a project that needs a long period for capital repayment. And so the businesses actually have to work with the governments to help design the policies. That’s my day job when I’m not here sharing it with you. And if—you know, I would say to any country that’s considering how to do this, it has to be essentially a partnership between businesses and government to decide to go down that pathway, to put those additional costs onto the economy with the expected payback that you get to the benefits of being net-zero in the long term.
PREETI JAIN: Thank you. I was hearing in this conference yesterday that as of today 90 percent of humanity on this planet is being now covered by net-zero commitments and targets. If that’s the case, it means—so the way we see at LanzaTech, we really need to start looking at carbon in a very radical way, how you produce that carbon, how you use that carbon, and how you dispose that carbon. And with technologies like LanzaTech at the intersection of synthetic biology and engineering, I think we are ready and committed to make that happen and help industries out there to meet these net-zero targets. So I’ll stop there.
GERARD OSTHEIMER: Devin, please. Closing remarks.
DEVIN O’GRADY: Thanks. You know, I think, yeah, policies need to work hand in hand with complementary measures, as well, in terms of fiscal programs or incentives to support this transition as we go forward. I don’t think anyone thinks this is going to be inexpensive, quite the opposite, so there has to be that partnership at that level. Here we’re seeing, I think, in terms of our membership, we’re working more closely than ever with our, you know, collaborative associations like Advanced Biofuels Canada, renewable industries, and then also the feedstock providers, so the ag community, the forestry community, in trying to make sure we, you know, we have sustainable feedstocks that can then make use of our technologies and our skill set and innovation so that we can get the end product to consumers, so that we continue with this reliable system and that, you know, we try to see as few disruptions as possible through this transition period.
GERARD OSTHEIMER: And thank you all for your questions. So have a great day. Hope you had a great conference.
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Image: An Iraqi labourer works at an oil refinery in the southern town Nasiriyah on October 30, 2015. South Oil Company (SOC) has raised production at Nasiriyah oil field from 40,000 barrels per day to between 65,000 and 70,000 barrels as it aims to reach 100,000 barrels by the end of next month. AFP PHOTO / HAIDAR MOHAMMED ALI (Photo credit should read HAIDAR MOHAMMED ALI/AFP/Getty Images)