A reality check for feedstocks, policy and capital

Manshu Agarwal, CEO, HutanBio, has outlined what he sees are the critical factors that will drive growth in the biofuels sector over the coming year. My prediction for the year ahead is that it will not be a breakout year for biofuel volumes, but more a period of strategic sorting in which resilience matters more than ambition and where costs and hard constraints finally overtake optimistic narratives. Project viability is now being decided by several stress tests: feedstock security, regulatory alignment, durability of sustainability credentials and a credible route to cost parity. Technology risk has fallen sharply as several SAF and advanced biofuel pathways have progressed from pilot to early commercial operation – confirming that the constraint is no longer chemistry, but rather system design and disciplined execution. This shifts the narrative from “does it work?” to “can it scale without breaking the system and at a cost the market can afford?” Feedstock availability At the same time, structural limits...