EGN NEWS DESK
For airways, switching to SAF is comparatively simple. These various fuels might be blended with, or solely exchange, petroleum-based kerosene in current jet engines. The essential problem is getting SAF within the first place. Supplies stay extraordinarily restricted and might price two to 5 instances greater than typical jet gasoline.
The U.S. produced simply 15.8 million gallons of SAF in 2022, or lower than 0.1 % of the overall quantity of jet gasoline utilized by main U.S. airways that yr. The Biden administration has set a goal of manufacturing 3 billion gallons of SAF per yr by 2030 — a almost 200-fold improve.
Doing the CO2 math on SAF
The Freedom Pines Fuels facility will make a small however significant contribution towards that purpose when it begins manufacturing within the first quarter of this yr. At full capability, the plant is anticipated to provide 9 million gallons of SAF per yr, plus one other 1 million gallons per yr of renewable diesel for street transportation.
The facility’s novel know-how is greater than a decade within the making, having come from LanzaTech’s earlier collaboration with the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Lab. The alcohol-to-jet course of entails utilizing grid electrical energy, fossil gasoline and hydrogen — a compound that’s in the present day principally derived from fossil gasoline — to remodel ethanol into jet gasoline.
LanzaJet says the Georgia plant will use a vary of “low-carbon-intensity” ethanol, together with probably from cellulosic feedstocks resembling corn stover and municipal strong waste. In an e-mail, the corporate mentioned it should initially use “Midwestern-source ethanol inside the United States.”
Last yr, LanzaJet additionally acquired federal approval to make use of sugarcane ethanol, the majority of which is produced in Brazil. Using LanzaJet’s course of with this feedstock can ship emissions reductions of 54 to 66 % when in comparison with a fossil diesel baseline, in accordance with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
But Piris-Cabezas mentioned he’s involved that any SAF facility utilizing corn or sugarcane crops might in the end improve aviation emissions if oblique results are totally accounted for — such because the CO2 that’s launched when forests are cleared to develop crops for vitality.
How these life-cycle emissions are calculated and thought of is on the coronary heart of the talk round federal tax credit for SAF producers. When releasing its tips final yr, the Treasury Department famous that the Biden administration is working to develop a “modified model” of its current CO2-accounting methodology, which is anticipated out by March 1.
Environmental Defense Fund and different local weather teams are urging the Treasury Department to strengthen its accounting strategy for figuring out life-cycle emissions to keep away from rewarding fuels that ship few to no local weather advantages. On the opposite aspect, biofuel producers, together with LanzaJet, have voiced help for utilizing Treasury’s current strategies, which they are saying mirror latest advances to cut back the carbon depth of biofuels, together with by enhancing agricultural practices.
Ultimately, Piris-Cabezas mentioned, the crucial is to “guarantee we channel public sources towards actually sustainable aviation fuels that truly have a future, by way of decarbonizing aviation over the lengthy run.”
