CCUS Creates Opportunity for Carbon-Negative Aviation Fuel

The search for carbon-neutral transportation solutions has led to a surge in ground transportation fuel alternatives. From hybrid and electric vehicles to hydrogen-powered buses, passengers and companies now have a variety of options for reducing their carbon footprint.

Fewer options exist for air travel, particularly for commercial jets whose size and distance make batteries and charging stations unfeasible.

Airlines seeking to meet voluntary targets or government mandates can purchase “sustainable aviation fuel,” a biofuel made from non-petroleum feedstocks that serves as a low-carbon alternative to the conventional jet fuel used in turbine-powered aircraft.

From Carbon-Neutral to Carbon-Negative

The Louisiana Green Fuels project by Strategic Biofuels takes sustainability to a new level, creating SAF with an “ultra-carbon negative” footprint.

The LGF biorefinery will use waste wood from managed, sustainable plantation forests as feedstock, converting the wood into carbon monoxide and hydrogen and then re-combining the elements to produce the SAF and a valuable byproduct known as “naphtha.” This process, known as the Fischer-Tropsch process, also creates byproducts of water and carbon dioxide.

All of the produced CO2 is sequestered underground, making carbon capture and storage a key component of the company’s negative emissions strategy.

Paul Schubert, CEO and founder of Strategic Biofuels, said the LGF SAF will have the lowest carbon footprint of any commercially available renewable fuel anywhere in the world.

“Simply put – we’re taking wood products that no one else uses and turning it into a much-needed fuel source. We consider this a closed loop of carbon usage since an airplane using our SAF is returning CO2 that would have been produced initially by decaying trees in unmanaged forests,” he said.

“This is quite different from fossil fuels, which release carbon initially stored deep in the earth,” he added.

The project is located in the Port of Columbia in northeast Louisiana, an area with ideal subsurface geologic conditions for carbon sequestration.

“Our SAF is chemically identical to petroleum-derived jet fuel and, under current federal regulations, can be blended at up to 50 percent with conventional jet fuel,” Schubert said. “Just one gallon of our SAF blended with three gallons of fossil-derived jet fuel will yield a true carbon-net-zero fuel.”

Biofuels’ Role in Energy Transition

With a doctorate in chemistry and more than 40 years in the petrochemical industry, Schubert has spent the last 25 years working with synthetic fuels and a dozen years working with renewable fuels. The more he learns about biofuels, the more he is convinced of the fundamental role they play in the emerging energy landscape.

“The energy transition will require liquid fuels for many years, and there is definitely a shift towards renewable fuels and away from fossil fuels at the heart of the energy transition,” he said.

Schubert’s work has shown him which fuels are the easiest to produce and which sectors need them most.

Image Caption

The LFG test facility. All photos courtesy of Strategic Biofuels.

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The search for carbon-neutral transportation solutions has led to a surge in ground transportation fuel alternatives. From hybrid and electric vehicles to hydrogen-powered buses, passengers and companies now have a variety of options for reducing their carbon footprint.

Fewer options exist for air travel, particularly for commercial jets whose size and distance make batteries and charging stations unfeasible.

Airlines seeking to meet voluntary targets or government mandates can purchase “sustainable aviation fuel,” a biofuel made from non-petroleum feedstocks that serves as a low-carbon alternative to the conventional jet fuel used in turbine-powered aircraft.

From Carbon-Neutral to Carbon-Negative

The Louisiana Green Fuels project by Strategic Biofuels takes sustainability to a new level, creating SAF with an “ultra-carbon negative” footprint.

The LGF biorefinery will use waste wood from managed, sustainable plantation forests as feedstock, converting the wood into carbon monoxide and hydrogen and then re-combining the elements to produce the SAF and a valuable byproduct known as “naphtha.” This process, known as the Fischer-Tropsch process, also creates byproducts of water and carbon dioxide.

All of the produced CO2 is sequestered underground, making carbon capture and storage a key component of the company’s negative emissions strategy.

Paul Schubert, CEO and founder of Strategic Biofuels, said the LGF SAF will have the lowest carbon footprint of any commercially available renewable fuel anywhere in the world.

“Simply put – we’re taking wood products that no one else uses and turning it into a much-needed fuel source. We consider this a closed loop of carbon usage since an airplane using our SAF is returning CO2 that would have been produced initially by decaying trees in unmanaged forests,” he said.

“This is quite different from fossil fuels, which release carbon initially stored deep in the earth,” he added.

The project is located in the Port of Columbia in northeast Louisiana, an area with ideal subsurface geologic conditions for carbon sequestration.

“Our SAF is chemically identical to petroleum-derived jet fuel and, under current federal regulations, can be blended at up to 50 percent with conventional jet fuel,” Schubert said. “Just one gallon of our SAF blended with three gallons of fossil-derived jet fuel will yield a true carbon-net-zero fuel.”

Biofuels’ Role in Energy Transition

With a doctorate in chemistry and more than 40 years in the petrochemical industry, Schubert has spent the last 25 years working with synthetic fuels and a dozen years working with renewable fuels. The more he learns about biofuels, the more he is convinced of the fundamental role they play in the emerging energy landscape.

“The energy transition will require liquid fuels for many years, and there is definitely a shift towards renewable fuels and away from fossil fuels at the heart of the energy transition,” he said.

Schubert’s work has shown him which fuels are the easiest to produce and which sectors need them most.

“Although renewable fuels can be prepared from feedstocks such as municipal solid waste, these feedstocks are generally very difficult to convert into fuel, compared to the feedstocks for biofuels – energy crops, forestry wastes, etc.,” he said.

“The build-out of effective rapid charging stations makes the adoption of electrification of long-distance trucking much slower than some would like and thus will drive demand for renewable diesel fuel for many years,” he added.

Biofuels for Air Travel

While biofuels will very likely remain important for use in ground transportation, they are considered essential for air travel.

“Although liquid fuels could theoretically be replaced for ground transportation by electric vehicles, electrification of long-distance air transport is not possible,” Schubert’s said.

“Demand for sustainable aviation fuels is being driven by a combination of voluntary targets by individual airlines, mandates for SAF in aviation fuels in some countries (the UK and EU), and by other incentives, particularly in the U.S.,” he said.

Schubert added that most methods of producing renewable diesel and SAF are carbon positive, meaning that their production creates CO2 emissions. The only way to get to zero is to combine the positive with a negative.

“Achieving carbo- neutral fuels requires blending with carbon-negative fuels,” he said. “Production of carbon-negative fuels is facilitated by CCS.”

A Business Case for CCS

Schubert’s experience has convinced him that, although renewable projects are essential for the energy transition, returns from such capital-intensive projects do not justify the risk.

He set out to develop a project that could leverage science to reduce emissions, and financial incentives to increase revenues. The concept was SAF production using CCS. The test of the concept was a green fuels project using carbon capture and sequestration to drive the carbon intensity deeply negative and generating revenues from the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard program and the Internal Revenue Service 45Q sequestration tax credits.

Schubert sought a project location with three essential elements: abundant forestry waste that is inherently low-carbon-intensity feedstock, nearly ideal subsurface geology for sequestration and a legislative and regulatory framework that favored sequestration projects.

An Ideal Location

All of these were present in Caldwell Parish in northeastern Louisiana.

Caldwell Parish was founded in 1838 as a steamboat community for cotton and timber. The Ouachita River flows through the center of the parish and services the Port of Columbia, which provides transportation along the river and by rail via the Union Pacific Railroad that stops on the property.

The LSU AgCenter reports that the bulk of Caldwell Parish’s income comes from row crops and timber, and some of the producers also raise cattle to subsidize their income. The county has a population of 9,200, with 21 percent living below the poverty level.

The forestry industry provides northeast Louisiana with a steady source of “slash” – branches and tree tops that result from harvesting trees for the roundwood (tree trunks).

Strategic Biofuels CEO Bob Meredith, a Caldwell Parish native resident, described how slash can be obtained from natural and plantation forests.

“Natural forests can be thinned to concentrate growth on the remaining trees. Managed forests where trees of the same type (usually southern yellow pine in the United States) are planted in rows and actively managed through thinning and harvesting with a goal of maximizing commercial lumber production,” he said.

Slash obtained from tree thinning is classified as “forestry waste” by the EPA and may qualify as feedstocks under the Federal Renewable Fuel Standard and thus qualify for federal credits.

Meredith described how repurposing slash not only provides a sustainable source of fuel but also an additional source of revenue for producers living in an economically depressed area.

“With declining traditional markets for pulp and paper, slash is an excellent feedstock for biofuels. Upon final harvesting of mature trees, the forest is replanted, usually in a 25-30-year cycle with two planned thinnings,” he said.

Meredith described four primary reasons for selecting the Port of Columbia as the plant site:

  • The surrounding area has abundant feedstock for the biofuels refinery and the biomass power plant, with high growth-to-removal ratios.
  • The Port of Columbia site is industrially certified and adjacent to a major four-lane U.S. highway for feedstock delivery, a mainline railroad for fuel product transport to major markets across the United States and the commercially navigable Ouachita River, facilitating offsite modular construction and onsite delivery by barge.
  • There are abundant Cretaceous-age sandstone reservoirs underlying the plant site that represent an optimal sequestration complex for the planned CCS operation.
  • The statutory and regulatory landscape in the State of Louisiana is supportive of development of carbon sequestration projects, including the recent receipt of primacy from the EPA, allowing the State to issue the needed Class VI permits.

Testing CCS Capacity

The team verified geological conditions for carbon sequestration with a Class V stratigraphic well test drilled and injection-tested in 2021. Steve Walkinshaw, AAPG member and Strategic Biofuels’ vice president of Geoscience, oversaw the team that drilled the well and conducted the injection tests.

A member of the company’s technical staff since its founding in 2020, Walkinshaw is responsible for geological and geophysical site characterization, all well planning and geological oversight, and the formal submission of all Class VI Permit applications.

He and other senior managers also meet regularly with local and regional officials and community members who have responded favorably to the project.

”Because our plant will employ directly onsite 150 workers plus create another 750 indirect jobs with salaries almost double the average household income, and contribute significantly to the tax base, the announcement of our plans to construct the facility has been met with broad and near-unanimous support,” Walkinshaw said.

In the three years since its public announcement, Strategic Biofuels continues to have a good relationship with stakeholders and the surrounding communities.

“Our relationship with the local community remains strong, and we still enjoy broad-based local and regional support,” he said.

The Louisiana Green Fuels project currently employs nine full-time employees and seven part-time employees and maintains an office in Caldwell Parish.

Hiring will increase dramatically when construction is underway and later as operations begin.

The team expects construction to be completed in late 2029, with SAF production to begin immediately thereafter.

Profitability and Future Plans

The project has received millions of dollars in grants from the U.S. Department of Energy and Forestry Services and strategic investment commitments from private companies including Sumitomo Corporation of Americas and JX Nippon Oil and Gas Exploration Corporation.

Schubert is optimistic about short and long-term commerciality.

“Overall economics for the project are robust and the project is expected to generate profits and free cash flow in the first full year of operation,” he said.

Meredith said Strategic Biofuels already has customers ready to purchase the SAF.

“We have agreement with an offtaker, who is also a major investor in the project, to accept delivery at the plant site,” he said. “They will ship all product to California by rail, with most of it destined for the Los Angeles and San Francisco airports. The same offtaker will also purchase most of the environmental credits.”

With Port of Columbia plant construction still underway, the company has plans for expansion.

“Once the first project is complete and the technical and economic performance is confirmed, we plan to immediately move forward with the construction of a second plant with much larger capacity,” Meredith said.

“The abundance of feedstock and the ability to expand the sequestration complex as needed to safely sequester all of the additional CO2 that would be produced will support a second plant, and likely a third one.”

Meredith described profit margins for SAF as comparable to those for more traditional fuel sources.

“Although capital intensive to build, properly structured biofuels projects, with the current system of carbon credits remaining mostly in place and producing negative carbon intensity liquid fuels, the profit margins from sustainable biofuels can significantly exceed those of conventional refiners that produce Jet A fuel,” he said.

Model for Other Areas

Walkinshaw said the Louisiana Green Fuels project can be replicated in other areas that have the right geologic conditions and access to raw materials and transportation.

“Our facility is planned to be ‘off-the grid’ – it will generate its own energy – and can be deployed anywhere there is sufficient woody feedstock, a means to get the biofuels to market (road, rail, river), and suitable sequestration reservoirs in the subsurface,” he said.

Walkinshaw enjoys sharing the Louisiana Green Fuels story with others, and he has delivered talks at conferences, including the SPE-AAPG-SEG CCUS events and AAPG Energy Summit.

He has some advice for anyone interested in developing sustainable energy projects in their communities.

“First and foremost, begin by involving and working closely with the local community to gain project support. Be transparent as possible with your proposed CCS operations. Hire as many as possible from the surrounding communities and coordinate training and education with the local schools and colleges,” he said.

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