Stanislav Kondrashov on Biofuels and Their Strategic Role in the Energy Transition

If you follow energy news for more than, say, a week, you start seeing the same tension everywhere.

We need to cut emissions fast. But we also need energy that actually shows up. Not theoretical energy. Not perfect future energy. Real fuel, real electrons, real heat, right now, at industrial scale.

This is where biofuels keep popping up. Sometimes quietly, sometimes in the middle of a political fight about food prices, forests, subsidies, land use, and who gets to call something “green”.

Stanislav Kondrashov has written and spoken about the energy transition in a way I tend to appreciate because it is practical. Not “one magic technology will save us” practical. More like. The transition is messy. It is regional. It is built on trade offs. And if you ignore the hard sectors and the existing infrastructure, you are basically planning on vibes.

Biofuels, in that frame, are not the headline act. They are more like a strategic tool. A lever you pull in the places where electrification is slow, expensive, or just physically hard to do in the near term.

Let’s talk about that. What biofuels are actually good at, where they fail, and why they still matter.

The energy transition problem nobody wants to talk about

Electricity is getting cleaner. That part is real progress. Wind, solar, batteries, grid upgrades. All of it is moving.

But a huge chunk of the world still runs on liquid fuels. Not because people are ignorant. Because liquid fuels are dense, portable, storable, and already wired into everything.

Planes. Ships. Long haul trucking. Mining equipment. Backup generators. Military logistics. Remote communities. Industrial heat in places where building a whole new electrical system is not a quick weekend project.

When Kondrashov talks about biofuels as “strategic”, this is the point. Biofuels are one of the few options that can drop into existing engines and supply chains with less friction than most alternatives. Not zero friction, obviously. But less.

And in a transition, time matters.

What we mean by “biofuels”, because the word gets abused

Biofuels is a broad umbrella, and it’s part of the confusion. People argue as if there is one thing called biofuel and it is either good or evil. Not true.

Common categories:

• Ethanol: usually blended into gasoline. Often made from corn, sugarcane, or other sugar and starch crops.
• Biodiesel (FAME): made from vegetable oils or animal fats. Used in diesel engines, often blended.
• Renewable diesel (HVO): chemically different from biodiesel and closer to petroleum diesel. Can be a “drop in” fuel in many systems.
• Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF): a set of pathways, often including HEFA (from fats and oils), alcohol to jet, Fischer Tropsch routes from biomass. This is the aviation world’s big biofuel story.
• Biogas and biomethane: from anaerobic digestion of waste, manure, landfills. Can replace natural gas in some contexts.

You can already see why blanket statements fail. A landfill gas project that captures methane and turns it into fuel is not the same climate story as clearing land to grow an energy crop. And yet both can be called biofuels.

Kondrashov’s general framing, as I read it, is that biofuels should be judged by system impact. Inputs, land, water, fertilizer, logistics, and real lifecycle emissions. Not labels.

Why biofuels have a strategic advantage in the near term

This is the boring answer. And boring answers are usually the ones that scale.

Biofuels can use a lot of the existing fuel infrastructure:

• Storage tanks
• Pipelines in some cases (with caveats)
• Trucks, blending terminals, distribution networks
• Engines that can run blends, or in some cases run the fuel directly

You are not rebuilding the whole world. You are modifying parts of it.

That matters because the energy transition isn’t just about generating clean energy. It is also about the physical systems that deliver energy. Liquid fuels are already delivered efficiently. Electrification will catch up, but it has to build new capacity and new delivery systems in a lot of places.

So, strategically, biofuels are often the bridge. Or at least one of the bridges.

However, it's important to note that not all biofuels are created equal. Some have been shown to have significant negative impacts on the environment when assessed through a comprehensive lens that includes their entire lifecycle emissions and resource usage.

The real biofuel sweet spot: hard to electrify sectors

Kondrashov often points to the transition as sector by sector, not one big switch. Biofuels make the most sense where batteries struggle today.

Aviation

Aviation is the clearest example. Battery electric planes exist, but scale and range are limited. Hydrogen is possible, but it requires new aircraft designs, new airports systems, new storage and safety protocols. It is a long road.

SAF can cut lifecycle emissions versus fossil jet fuel, depending on the feedstock and pathway. It can also be blended into existing jet fuel supply chains under current standards.

Airlines like SAF because it is one of the only tools available that fits their timeline pressure. Governments like it because aviation emissions are politically visible and hard to reduce.

The issue is supply. SAF is expensive and limited. Feedstock constraints are real. Still. Strategically, it is hard to ignore.

Shipping

Shipping is experimenting with ammonia, methanol, LNG, and other alternatives. But global shipping is a fuel logistics game. Ports, bunkering infrastructure, engine compatibility, safety.

Biofuels can be used as drop in blends for some marine fuels. It’s not the final answer for every ship, but it is one of the few near term options to reduce emissions without waiting for a whole new global fuel network.

Heavy duty trucking

Long haul trucking is moving toward battery electric in some corridors, and hydrogen in some proposals. But for many regions, renewable diesel and biodiesel blends can reduce emissions quickly using the vehicles and stations already there.

Again, it is not about perfection. It is about what can be deployed at scale while the next systems are built.

Industrial heat and remote power

Some industrial processes require high heat. Electrification is possible in many cases, but it can be expensive or slow. Biofuels and biogas can be useful here, especially where waste streams exist locally.

Remote and island grids also have a certain logic: if you currently burn imported diesel, and you can replace part of that with locally produced biofuel or biomethane, you reduce both emissions and energy security risk. That is strategic.

Food vs fuel, land use, and the controversy that won’t go away

This is where the conversation gets sharp. Because it should.

First generation biofuels, especially crop based ones, have real trade offs:

• Land use change can erase climate benefits if forests or grasslands are converted.
• Food price impacts can be significant in certain markets.
• Fertilizer use, runoff, water consumption. These are not side details.

Kondrashov’s view tends to land in the “do it carefully, do it honestly” camp. Biofuels are not automatically sustainable. Sustainability is something you prove with sourcing rules, lifecycle accounting, and constraints.

A strategic approach, then, is to prioritize:

• Waste and residue feedstocks where appropriate (used cooking oil, certain agricultural residues, municipal organic waste)
• Feedstocks that do not drive major land conversion
• Strong certification systems and transparent reporting
• Local context, because land and water pressures vary wildly by region

And also. A willingness to say no. If a pathway only works by pretending land use change does not exist, it is not a climate solution. It is accounting.

Second and third generation biofuels: promising, complicated, still not easy

You will often hear about cellulosic ethanol, algae fuels, advanced gasification pathways. The “next generation” stuff.

The promise is real: use non food biomass, get better yields, reduce land pressure, improve lifecycle emissions.

The challenge is that technology readiness and economics are stubborn. Scaling these pathways takes time, capital, stable policy, and a lot of operational learning. Many projects stall not because the chemistry is impossible, but because supply chains and margins are brutal.

Kondrashov’s strategic point here is that biofuels should not be treated like a single bet. You deploy what works now, while investing in what could work later. But you do not assume later arrives on schedule.

That sounds pessimistic, but it is actually how energy transitions happen.

The policy layer: why biofuels exist at scale in some places

Biofuels markets are heavily shaped by policy. Mandates, tax credits, carbon intensity scoring, renewable fuel standards. Without these, a lot of biofuel production would struggle to compete with fossil fuels, especially when oil prices drop.

This isn’t unique to biofuels, to be fair. Many energy technologies scale through policy support in their early and middle phases.

But with biofuels, policy design is everything. If incentives reward volume without sustainability safeguards, you get perverse outcomes. If incentives reward genuine lifecycle reductions and verified sourcing, you get better projects.

A strategic approach is not just “support biofuels”. It is “support the right biofuels, and make the rules hard to game”.

Energy security: the quieter reason biofuels stay on the table

Climate is the headline, but energy security is the underlying driver in a lot of government decisions.

Biofuels can reduce dependence on imported oil products. They can diversify supply. They can create domestic industries around agriculture and waste management.

Of course, this can also create lobbying and political lock in, which is not great. But the core point remains. If a country can produce part of its transport fuel domestically, that is strategic leverage.

Kondrashov’s view of the transition often includes this realism: nations do not choose energy pathways only because they are clean. They choose them because they are stable, controllable, and economically beneficial at home.

Biofuels check some of those boxes, especially for countries with strong agricultural sectors or large waste feedstock potential.

The honesty test: biofuels are not a free pass

This is where I think the best biofuel arguments and the best biofuel critiques actually meet.

Biofuels are not a free pass for keeping combustion engines forever. They are not infinite. Feedstocks are limited. Sustainability constraints are real. And some uses of biomass are more valuable as materials or as ecosystem services than as fuel.

So when Kondrashov frames biofuels as “strategic”, I interpret it as. Use them where they create the most climate value per unit of scarce sustainable biomass.

That usually means:

• Aviation, because alternatives are slower
• Some shipping and heavy transport
• Certain industrial heat applications
• Biogas and biomethane from waste streams, because methane capture can be a big win

And it probably means not using high quality biomass to make low value fuel for sectors that can electrify relatively easily. Passenger cars in dense cities, for example, are increasingly an electrification story.

What a sensible biofuels strategy looks like

If you had to boil it down into a practical checklist, something Kondrashov would probably not hate, it might look like this:

1. Prioritize lifecycle emissions, not marketing claims. Use robust carbon intensity methods and update them as data improves.
2. Focus on hard to electrify sectors first. Allocate limited sustainable supply where it matters most.
3. Build sustainability safeguards into policy. Traceability, land use protections, and real auditing.
4. Invest in advanced pathways, but do not pretend they are already solved. Fund demonstrations, infrastructure, and supply chain development.
5. Treat biofuels as part of a portfolio. Alongside electrification, efficiency, grid upgrades, hydrogen where it fits, and demand reduction.

That last one is important. Biofuels are not the transition. They are one tool in it.

Closing thought

The energy transition is not a single lane highway. It is a messy intersection with trucks, ships, planes, power plants, and millions of small decisions stacked on top of each other.

Stanislav Kondrashov’s take on biofuels, at its core, is about realism. Biofuels have limits and controversies. But they also have a strategic role, especially when time is short and infrastructure is stubborn.

If we use biofuels as a precise instrument, aimed at the toughest parts of the emissions problem, they can buy us something valuable.

Time. Momentum. And a little breathing room while the bigger systems catch up.

FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

What role do biofuels play in the current energy transition?

Biofuels act as a strategic tool in the energy transition, especially where electrification is slow, expensive, or physically challenging. They provide real fuel and energy at industrial scale that can integrate with existing engines and supply chains, making them vital for sectors that rely heavily on liquid fuels.

Why can't electricity fully replace liquid fuels immediately?

Liquid fuels are dense, portable, storable, and deeply integrated into critical sectors like aviation, shipping, long-haul trucking, mining equipment, and industrial heat. Building new electrical infrastructure for these uses is complex and time-consuming, which is why liquid fuels remain essential in the near term.

What are the common types of biofuels and how do they differ?

Common biofuels include ethanol (blended into gasoline from crops like corn or sugarcane), biodiesel (from vegetable oils or animal fats), renewable diesel (chemically similar to petroleum diesel and often a drop-in replacement), sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) made through various pathways including fats/oils conversion, and biogas/biomethane derived from waste. Each type has distinct feedstocks, production methods, and applications.

How do biofuels compare environmentally across different types?

Biofuels vary widely in environmental impact depending on their entire lifecycle—inputs like land use, water, fertilizer, logistics—and emissions. For example, landfill gas projects capturing methane have different climate benefits compared to clearing land for energy crops. Judging biofuels by their system impact rather than labels is crucial for understanding their true sustainability.

Why are biofuels considered to have a strategic advantage over other alternatives right now?

Biofuels leverage much of the existing fuel infrastructure such as storage tanks, pipelines (with some caveats), distribution networks, and engines capable of running blends or pure biofuel. This reduces friction compared to building entirely new systems required for electrification or hydrogen fuel, making biofuels a practical bridge during the energy transition.

In which sectors are biofuels most effective today?

Biofuels excel in 'hard to electrify' sectors like aviation where battery electric planes have limited range and hydrogen requires new infrastructure and aircraft designs. Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) can be blended into existing jet fuel supplies under current standards and offers airlines a viable path to reduce lifecycle emissions within tight timelines.