With the transportation sector accounting for one-third of U.S. carbon emissions, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) with the support of the Department of Agriculture, will release its latest study later this year on potential feedstocks for sustainable fuels. Conducted every five years, the study will focus on what biomass and waste feedstocks are actually available along with their sustainability criteria.
The “Billion Ton Study”—which will also determine where the feedstocks are concentrated—will be valuable to companies in the growing sustainable aviation fuel industry as they determine the locations of future renewable fuel refineries and the most effective conversion technologies needed to process those materials.
“This year’s version is going to include cover crops as well as CO2 waste gasses, both very important for the future of sustainable aviation fuel,” said Valerie Sarisky-Reed, director of the DOE’s Bioenergy Technologies Office in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
Speaking this week during the Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative’s virtual two-day SAF event, she explained: “We know that energy crops are essential as part of that billion-ton sustainable biomass, so we need to begin to evaluate how energy crops will begin to play in this world when they don’t even exist yet.”