LONDON, June 10 (Reuters) – Bayer is hoping to speed up a plan to facilitate North American production of biofuel feedstocks like camelina in \u200cthe wake of the Iran war, the drug-making and crop science giant \u200csaid on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The war has prompted a surge in fossil fuel prices and in turn driven renewed \u200binterest in biofuels – typically made from locally grown crops like sugar and corn – as a means to improve energy security and potentially cut energy costs.<\/p>\n
Biofuels, which are usually blended into gasoline or used to replace diesel, become more economical when fossil fuel prices \u200crise.<\/p>\n
The fossil fuel alternatives have \u2060long prompted debate as to whether burning crops to produce energy will drive up food prices and deforestation rates. That has \u2060spurred innovation in second-generation biofuels made from organic materials that don’t compete with foodstuffs.<\/p>\n
Camelina, for example, is an intermediate crop that can be grown between main planting seasons or \u200bon underutilised \u200bland.<\/p>\n
“We are targeting a couple of million \u200bacres of camelina production in North \u200cAmerica, and we’re in the process of evaluating expansion in other geographies,” Bayer’s global head of cereals, cotton and canola Peter Muller told Reuters on the sidelines of the International Grains Council conference in London.<\/p>\n
The Germany-based firm announced last month it had formed an alliance with energy major BP to commercialize camelina for producing biodiesel, \u200crenewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuels.<\/p>\n
Muller said the \u200bfirm had been hoping to facilitate its targeted \u200bacreage of camelina production by \u200bthe mid-2030s, but it is now hoping to meet this target \u200cearlier given renewed interest in the \u200bfuels amid the Iran \u200bwar.<\/p>\n
“Those decisions were taken in a different context… Now it’s about ramping things up even quicker,” he said.<\/p>\n
Muller added that Bayer was also about to \u200bclose on a deal with \u200ca firm that will crush North American camelina, providing farmers entering \u200bthe space with confidence there will be a buyer for their crop.<\/p>\n
(Reporting \u200bby May Angel; Editing by Jan Harvey)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON, June 10 (Reuters) – Bayer is hoping to speed up a plan to facilitate North American production…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21161],"tags":[21182,31589,1100,31588,1333,21491,31587],"class_list":["post-34010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bayer","tag-bayer","tag-camelina","tag-energy-security","tag-fossil-fuel-prices","tag-iran-war","tag-north-american","tag-peter-muller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}