Biofuels could be a “game changer” for both military and commercial aviation, says Assistant Secretary of the Air Force Terry Yonkers, because they’re proving to have advantages over petroleum-based jet fuels that go beyond the environment. Yonkers recently said the Air Force is working toward certifying all of its jets to fly on biofuels and Fischer-Tropsch fuels. Fischer-Tropsch fuels are derived from mixtures of coal, natural gas and/or biomass. This synthetic fuel process was developed in Germany in World War II, and adapting it to use biomass feedstocks has been a focus of research by the US Departments of Energy and Defense.
Development of effective biofuels is an important issue in the airline industry, as it is in ground transportation. The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 superseded and greatly expanded the biofuels blending mandate originally laid out in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The revised Renewable Fuel Standard (referred to as RFS2) expanded the mandate to 36 billion gallons annually in 2022, of which no more than 15 billion gallons can be ethanol from corn starch, and no less than 16 billion must be from cellulosic biofuels. The regulation also laid out specific requirements for “other advanced biofuels.”
