Boeing, Airbus and Embraer to Collaborate on Aviation Biofuel Commercialization

Accelerating Availability is Key Pillar of Industry's Sustainable Growth Strategy

GENEVA, March 22, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Boeing (NYSE: BA), Airbus and Embraer today signed a memorandum of understanding to work together on the development of drop-in, affordable aviation biofuels. The three leading airframe manufacturers agreed to seek collaborative opportunities to speak in unity to government, biofuel producers and other key stakeholders to support, promote and accelerate the availability of sustainable new jet fuel sources.

Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and CEO Jim Albaugh, Airbus President and CEO Tom Enders, and Embraer Commercial Aviation President Paulo Cesar Silva, signed the agreement at the Air Transport Action Group (ATAG) Aviation and Environment Summit in Geneva.

"There are times to compete and there are times to cooperate," said Jim Albaugh. "Two of the biggest threats to our industry are the price of oil and the impact of commercial air travel on our environment. By working with Airbus and Embraer on sustainable biofuels, we can accelerate their availability and reduce our industry's impacts on the planet we share."

"We've achieved a lot in the last ten years in reducing our industry's CO2 footprint - a 45 percent traffic growth with only three percent more fuel consumption," said Tom Enders. "The production and use of sustainable quantities of aviation biofuels is key to meeting our industry's ambitious CO2 reduction targets and we are helping to do this through Research and Technology our expanding network of worldwide value chains and supporting the EU commission towards its target of four percent of biofuel for aviation by 2020."

"We are all committed to take a leading role in the development of technology programs that will facilitate aviation biofuels development and actual application faster than if we were doing it independently," said Paulo Cesar Silva. "Few people know that Brazil's well known automotive biofuels program started within our aeronautical research community, back in the seventies, and we will keep on making history."

The collaboration agreement supports the industry's multi-pronged approach to continuously reduce the industry's carbon emissions. Continuous innovation, spurred by competitive market dynamics that push each manufacturer to continuously improve product performance, and air traffic modernization, are other critical elements to achieving carbon-neutral growth beyond 2020 and halving industry emissions by 2050 based on 2005 levels.

"Having these three aviation leaders set aside their competitive differences and work together in support of biofuel development, underscores the importance and focus the industry is placing on sustainable practices," said ATAG Executive Director Paul Steele. "Through these types of broad industry collaboration agreements, aviation is doing all it can to drive measurable reductions in carbon emissions, while continuing to provide strong global economic and social value."

All three companies are affiliate members of the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Users Group (www.safug.org), which includes 23 leading airlines responsible for approximately 25 percent of annual aviation fuel use. Boeing and Embraer are already collaborating on how to establish a sustainable aviation biofuels industry in Brazil and exploring new technology pathways to broaden biofuel sourcing and availability. Boeing and Airbus are also active around the globe in helping to establish regional supply chains, while the three manufacturers have all supported numerous biofuel flights since global fuel standards bodies granted their approval for commercial use in 2011.

Biofuels News from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Fill 'Er Up With Tobacco? Berkeley Lab-Led Team Explores New Path to Biofuels

ARPA-E funded project aims to produce fuel molecules in plant leaves

FEBRUARY 23, 2012

Dan Krotz   dakrotz@lbl.gov

 2 

 

 

    

Feature

It'll take some doing, but Berkeley Lab's Christer Jansson and others hope to create a new recipe for biofuels. The idea is to take hydrocarbon-synthesizing genes from cyanobacteria (in the flask) and introduce them into tobacco plants. Jansson will discuss the project at the Feb. 27-29 ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit.

Mention biofuels and most people think of corn ethanol. Some may think of advanced biofuels from switchgrass or miscanthus. But tobacco? Not likely.

That could change. A team of scientists led by a researcher from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is exploring a way to produce gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel from the iconic plant of the South.

Their goal is to engineer tobacco plants that use energy from sunlight to produce fuel molecules directly in their leaves. The leaves would then be crushed, and the fuel extracted and separated. The scientists estimate that about 1000 acres of tobacco could yield more than one million gallons of fuel.

Why tobacco? It’s grown in large tracts throughout the U.S and in more than 100 countries. It generates multiple harvests per year, its large leaves could store a lot of fuel, and it’s amenable to genetic engineering.

But before you fill up with gas squeezed from tobacco, the scientists must first get through a long checklist of pioneering research. Success could give the nation a new source of transportation fuel.

If this sounds promising—albeit a bit of a long shot—that’s by design. The $4.9 million project is funded by DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), which focuses on “high risk, high payoff concepts—technologies promising genuine transformation in the ways we generate, store and utilize energy.”

The project is led by Christer Jansson, a plant biochemist with Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division. He’ll discuss the project at the 3rd Annual ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, to be held February 27-29 near Washington, D.C.

Can tobacco leaves hold fuel molecules? An ARPA-E funded project at Berkeley Lab is taking on the challenge.

Jansson will be joined at the summit by other Berkeley Lab scientists who’re pursuing ARPA-E projects, all potential game-changers. These include a way to quickly discover materials that capture CO₂ from power plant emissions, an innovative method to produce biofuel from microbes, and the development of a low-cost flow battery for the grid that could boost the adoption of renewables.
In the tobacco-to-fuels project, Jansson and his collaborators want to create a shortcut in the way in which solar energy is converted to biofuel. Today, one approach to advanced biofuel production requires deconstructing biomass and then using microbes to ferment the resulting sugars into fuel. In contrast, the team hopes to create a plant that grabs CO₂ from the air and converts the carbon into a fuel that’s almost ready for the tank.
“We want to bypass downstream processes like fermentation and produce fuels directly in the crop,” says Jansson. “After the biomass is crushed, we could extract the hydrocarbon molecules, and crack them into shorter molecules, creating gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel.”
To get there, the scientists will work to create tobacco plants that are optimized to take in CO₂, harvest sunlight, and produce hydrocarbon molecules.
For the latter, Jansson will start with cyanobacteria genes that encode for enzymes which produce alkane, a type of hydrocarbon. He’ll then make synthetic versions of these genes that are suited for expression in tobacco. In another approach, Tasios Melis, a UC Berkeley biologist, will conduct a similar exercise with green algae genes that produce isoprenoids, another type of hydrocarbon.

These genes will be introduced into tobacco plants grown by UC Berkeley scientist Peggy Lemaux. Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging of the leaves by UC Berkeley chemist David Wemmer will enable the scientists to spot any carbon bottlenecks in the plant and refine their metabolic engineering. In addition, Cheryl Kerfeld, a scientist at DOE’s Joint Genome Institute, will search the genomes of hundreds of cyanobacteria species for other alkane-producing genes that could also prove useful.

The scientists also want to get as much carbon into the tobacco plant as possible to maximize hydrocarbon production. Ordinary tobacco “fills up” with CO₂ very quickly. To increase the plant’s carbon uptake, the team will again turn to cyanobacteria, which are very efficient at grabbing carbonate from the surrounding water and transporting it into the cell. Jansson hopes to insert cyanobacteria genes that facilitate this carbon transport into the chloroplasts of tobacco plants.

Melis and UC Berkeley scientist Kris Niyogi will also work to enhance tobacco’s use of light during photosynthesis. Melis will use a technique he developed that enables the manipulation of a plant’s light-harvesting mechanisms.

The team hopes to grow their first plant in about 18 months. Their ultimate goal is a plant in which between 20 and 30 percent of its dry weight is hydrocarbon. Promising plants will be grown in Kentucky in a pilot test overseen by the Kentucky Tobacco Research and Development Center, whose scientists will explore ways to optimize the plants’ growth and harvest conditions.

###

Flying Planes with Biofuels

From USDA Blog:

Posted by Justin DeJong, Office of Communications, on January 16, 2012 at 3:50 PM

Today, in Chicago, I joined Secretary Vilsack as he met with leaders from Boeing, United Airlines and Honeywell, to talk about support for the development of biofuels to power our jets.

In the United States alone, passenger and cargo airlines spend about $50 billion on fuel each year. If just a fraction of those billions were used to purchase American-produced aviation biofuels, we provide the opportunity to create thousands of good-paying jobs in communities across the nation.

President Obama and Secretary Vilsack have been strong advocates for using biofuels to power our cars, trucks and planes.  This reliable source of energy has the potential to drive important economic growth, especially in rural America.  You can read some of his thoughts on why this is important here in the Secretary’s weekly column.

This past few months reminded us that the future of biofuels for aviation is bright.  We saw the first domestic passenger flights powered by biofuels and USDA issued a loan guarantee to a private firm that will build and operate a biorefinery in New Mexico to support the conversion of algae into a renewable jet fuel.  Secretary Vilsack visited the Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels InitiativeBiannual Meeting and met with a host of partners to talk about promoting the use of renewable fuels for commercial aviation.

Projects like these that exemplify USDA’s support of aviation biofuels. As such, at the CAAFI meeting USDA and FAA released a ‘Feedstock Readiness Level Tool’ to help support future planning efforts to develop biofuels for aviation.  Also, USDA is releasing a draft report – authored in conjunction with the Airlines for America and Boeing – that outlines our work on aviation biofuels to-date, and contains our findings and our private partners’ recommendations for next steps.

Working together, we can build a future where renewable energy is a win-win:  creating jobs for the American people while increasing our domestic energy security.