(Roll Call) Aviation accounts for 10 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions — a figure expected to triple by 2050 … Trucking industry representatives have raised concerns that a larger reliance on SAF will take away key feedstocks from biodiesel, an alternative fuel that’s already been used for years. Biodiesel and SAF are both made up of lipids, primarily soybean oils and used cooking oils, and critics say that scaling up SAF could undermine the biodiesel industry, which helped reduce more than 18 million tons of carbon emissions on California’s roads between 2011 and 2019.
“Touting sustainable aviation fuel as a ‘new method’ for reducing transportation carbon emissions ignores the fact that it will unravel decades of existing carbon reductions in over-the-road transportation and increase fuel prices for commercial fleets,” said the National Association of Truck Stop Operators, a trucking industry representative, in a statement. “In fact, renewable jet fuel production is simply designed to displace existing and future, less expensive renewable diesel production.”
Tax credit boost
Cooper said that the SAF industry has some positive signs. The tax credit has been a huge boon for the SAF industry, he said, and new technologies have emerged in the past year that provide new feedstocks for SAF. For example, companies like Honeywell have developed a way to further process ethanol, a popular starch-based biofuel, into jet fuel, which opens up the SAF industry to hundreds of existing bio-refineries and provides for a feedstock other than lipids.
Washington, D.C.-based Alder Fuels, a SAF production company, is also working with Honeywell to use feedstocks like degenerative grasses and forest and agricultural residues. With a more diverse range of feedstocks, the Energy Department projects the industry would be able to produce 50 billion to 60 billion gallons per year with biomass like corn, grain, algae, agricultural and forestry residues and municipal solid waste streams.
Congress seems eager to move ahead on aviation biofuels, including some lawmakers who have been reluctant to back energy transition fuels.
Congress has long fought over what to do about biofuels, which has caused a regional split over how much biofuels like ethanol to blend into gasoline under the renewable fuel standard. Lawmakers from Midwestern states that produce key crops like corn and sugarcane used to make ethanol have long supported increased biofuel blends.
Legislators from states with oil refinery operations like Texas and Oklahoma have pushed back against biofuels, arguing that it will only increase fuel production costs that translate to higher prices at the pump.
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But it seems that SAF’s diverse choice of feedstocks makes it more appealing to some lawmakers from both parties.
Republicans from states outside of the Midwest, including those who usually oppose green energy initiatives — like the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s top Republican, John Barrasso, R-Wyo.; Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont.; and Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La. — have come to support SAF and biodiesel production. All have biodiesel production plants located in their states.
Montana-based oil refiner Calumet Montana Refining announced its renewable arm, Montana Renewables, had recently received bonds to add biodiesel production infrastructure to its refinery. Louisiana is also set to get new renewable diesel plants, including one from project development company Strategic Biofuels LLC, and Barrasso said Wyoming is “a leading producer of renewable diesel and is expected to produce a lot more in the near future.”
The Republican group, along with Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., introduced a bill in the last Congress that would allow renewable and sustainable aviation fuels to qualify for the Energy Department’s Title XVII loan guarantees under the Energy Policy Act of 2005.
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And as long as SAF continues to show promises to grow industries across the country, it’s likely that Republicans will remain supportive of aviation biofuels.
“During the conversations regarding the tax credit, we didn’t get a lot of pushback from really anybody,” a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee aide familiar with the discussions said. “Many Republicans have conceptually endorsed the idea of SAF and ways to reduce barriers … the [aviation] industry pushed for it, labor organizations pushed for it, and as long as strong environmental standards are in place, environmentalists are behind it too.”
The aide added that Democrats on the committee will likely look into building on SAF progress made throughout the last few years, including ways to ramp up SAF storage and transportation infrastructure. READ MORE