The Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) workshop, organised by the Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO), convened various stakeholders from industry, government bodies, DOE national laboratories, academia, and more. Its focus was on devising a research strategy for cultivating purpose-grown biomass energy crops at a large scale to supply feedstocks for biofuels and bioproducts.
Participants contributed insights on bridging information gaps hindering the deployment of purpose-grown energy crops, proposed strategies to overcome these hurdles, suggested innovative approaches for sustainable long-term success, and discussed ways to broaden stakeholder engagement.
Although based in The United States and aimed at the aviation fuel industry, this report offers a comprehensive summary of the workshop, encompassing key presentations, discussions from breakout sessions, and the resulting outcomes.
From the perspective of growing woody biomass crops there is a call for closing the knowledge gaps related to:
- Large-scale demonstrations
- Preprocessing and Logistics
- Long-term yield and quality data
- Social and stakeholder engagement
- Soil characteristics
All things that Biomass Connect is working on here in the UK.