What happened?

The article discusses the failure of the United States to meet its goal of producing 16 billion gallons per year of ethanol from cellulosic biomass by 2022. Despite investing $10 billion in public and private funds, less than 10 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol were produced in 2022. The author argues that the failure can be attributed to the lack of five necessary subsystems: large-scale feedstock production, large-scale transport systems, large-scale biorefining systems, large-scale systems to transport biofuels to end markets, and large-scale end markets for the biofuels. The author suggests that the success of renewable natural gas (RNG) produced from waste cellulosic biomass can be attributed to meeting these subsystem requirements, while cellulosic ethanol did not. The article concludes by emphasizing the need to pay attention to these subsystems in order to achieve large-scale cellulosic biofuels production. [Extracted from the article]