 This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community Matters here. I'm Joelle Simmel-Pietri from the member of the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. I'm filling in for Sharon Moriwaki today. And I'm going to be introducing a few guests. One here in the studio, Dr. Scott Turn from the University of Hawaii Natural Energy Institute. And then also we have two guests on the line from the U.S. mainland as we like to say here. We're going to have Ms. Carol Sim, the Assistant Director of the Federal Aviation Administration's Aviation Sustainability Center of Excellence, or ASCEND for short. And Mr. Steve Zonka, the Executive Director of a different FAA center, the Commercial Alternative Aviation Fuel Initiative, or CAFE for short. So again, we're enjoying beautiful weather here in Hawaii, and they're enjoying not quite as beautiful weather probably in Ohio and Washington State, but we're going to go ahead and get started. So first I'd like to bring up Carol and introduce the Aviation Sustainability Center of Excellence to us. Carol, over to you. Thank you, Joelle, and good afternoon, and thank you for inviting me to speak on behalf of ASCEND. And yes, I'm in Portland, Oregon, and we got two inches of snow last night, so it's warmer as white. The center is an FAA center of excellence that's focused on jet fuel, aviation jet fuel, and the environment. It's worked to create science-based solutions for the aviation industry's biggest challenges. If you look at an image, you can see that we're a cooperative aviation research organization that's co-led by Washington State University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And we have across the country 16 various university partners that help support the research of the center. It's efficient that we have approximately 60 industry stakeholders. You should be able to see a list of those stakeholders and university partners on your screen as well. The industry partners work as an advisory committee to help direct some of the efforts of the center. ASCEND is primarily funded by the FAA with contributions from other federal agencies such as NASA, the Department of Defense, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Transport Canada. Research conducted by the university partners is directed by the FAA's Office of Environment and Energy. It's focused in four key areas, one of which is alternative fuels. We're also looking at aviation emissions, community noise impacts, and aircraft operations, including optimized descent profile and maximizing flight paths to reduce energy. Although ASCEND research projects address all of these topics, today we're just really going to focus on the alternative jet fuel activities associated with the center. It's also worth noting, and I think in the next 10 minutes, that the work of the center supports the federal alternative jet fuels research and development strategy. That strategy is to enhance energy security, expand domestic energy sources, facilitate a diverse, secure, reliable fuel supply, reduce emissions that affect both local air quality and global climate impacts, want to generate economic and rural development, and then finally promote social welfare. The five key ESCEND projects that are focused on alternative fuels include feedstock development, processing, and conversion pathways. And Dr. Turn will be talking about that a bit later. We also are looking at regional supply chains and refining infrastructure. It's really key to remember that there is no silver bullet feedstock across the U.S. It really depends on the local region and what feedstock it can produce. You're growing those feedstocks or harvesting them as far as the visual. So Scott will be talking a bit more on what is available in Hawaii. The center also looks at environmental benefits analysis, so the lifecycle of analyses of, excuse me, alternative fuels, looking at from power supply versus from an oil well to the engine as well. We also, not so much as interested in Hawaii right now, but look at the aircraft component deterioration and where. We want to make sure that the alternative fuels are not causing any impact to the engine or other components that could decrease performance or increase maintenance costs. And then we also have a fuel performance testing through the National Jet Fuel Conversation Program. And as you can imagine that there's very rigorous testing that needs to go into alternative fuels to ensure that they meet the very rigorous safety and performance standards that promote the control of the jet fuel. All of these projects that I've described go into a tool kit that Ascent uses to help FAA develop an advanced analytical tool to help inform some of their regulatory activities. The Ascent research also helps support some international goals, and we have an image that will show that the international aviation community supports efforts to decarbonize aviation schools and through the International Civil Aviation Organization Committee on Aviation and Environmental Protection, it will show that carbon-neutral growth from 2020 at a 50% reduction in aviation emissions by 2050 compared to a 2005 safe one. In order to do that, we can look at the technology. It should look like a chart that goes up like this. The commercial supplies of sustainable alternative fuels is essential for the industry to meet that goal. You have an image on your screen with a big section in the middle that really shows where the alternative fuels come in and how that'll support the industry. Without it, I think I'm going to turn it back to Joelle, and she will introduce Nathan Alka from CAPI and Scott and the work that they're doing in this area. Thank you. Thank you, Carol. You covered a lot of ground there, so if you can bring up back up that last image you just talked at, a lot of frequently asked questions that those of us involved in renewable fuels get asked is, well, what else are you doing that's not just fuels? What we're showing in this graph here, this is the International Civil Aviation Organization. Basically, all commercial airlines are members of this organization, and it regulates commercial aviation operations globally, and this is the plan for carbon neutral growth from 2020 onwards. Today's show is actually going to be a deep dive into that light green triangle on the lower right-hand side, the sustainable alternative fuels and market-based measures. There's lots of other things that can be done and are being done, and the slide also points to ATM for air traffic management and infrastructure. Those are some measures that here in the state of Hawaii can actually be done at Hawaii's airports, for example. But for this green triangle, this area is one of the primary focus areas for Steve Zanka and the commercial aviation alternative fuel initiative. So maybe Steve, if we could turn to you and you could give us an introduction to Kathy. We'd appreciate it. Thank you. Sure, Joelle. Steve Zanka here. He's the executive director of the commercial aviation alternative fuels initiative. Kathy has been in existence for about 12 years, and I think the image 2 of, or image Y2 of image 6 gives a little bit of background on Kathy. Kathy's actually not an FAA entity, like Ascent is. Kathy's actually a public-private partnership between the aviation industry and the government with our primary governmental sponsor being the FAA. But our other sponsors are the Aerospace Industries Association, Airports Council International, and Airlines for America, in addition to the FAA. So it's basically a pretty broad segment of the industry, the people who make the equipment that we want. Bring up the PowerPoint presentation called Image 6, and that'll show what some of the stuff Steve was talking about. The Aerospace Industries Association, those are the folks who make the equipment that we fly. Airports Council represents the airports where we fly in and out of, and Airlines for America represents the carriers who are flying. So Kathy really represents the fact that there's about a 25 billion gallon per year US jet market pool that Joelle mentioned a minute ago, that's shown in the wedge charts that reflect our commitments to improving our life cycle CO2. So we're in the aviation industry established to facilitate and promote the introduction of alternative aviation fuels. So Carol described a lot of things that are being done on a scientific basis, some R&D exploration, the evaluation of business models, et cetera. And what Kathy is focused on is working with the industry trying to establish complete supply chains that will actually result in the production of the sample alternative jet fuel and the sale of that fuel to Airlines. We have done a lot of work over the last several years to create basically the language, the vernacular that the industry is using to work to stand up a new industrial sector for the production of renewable fuels. Our goals with respect to those fuels are that they deliver equivalent safety and performance, that we can get them at comparable cost to petroleum-based fuel that they provide environmental improvement and enable the security of energy supply for aviation. And we've demonstrated over the last decade that we can do that through the production of synthetic kerosene, primarily from renewable sources. And it is a very broad range of renewable sources that we'll talk more about. If you go to the last image in that set that I provided, this is just one part of the work that Kathy has done. And when I talk about Kathy, I'm really talking about the entire industry. Kathy is a focal for many of these activities, but it takes the full industry to execute on some of these things that we're doing. The last slide is a reflection of the approach that we use to develop and approve a new type of synthetic jet fuel. In the background, there's a background diagram there that starts toward the lower right hand of that image. It starts with tier one, and it's got a series of arrows that fall all the way through to a final ASTM approval. That process basically requires that we understand what the physical fuel properties are, that they meet the specifications for normal jet fuel. We ensure that they interact normally with materials that are found in aviation products. And when we find that we've got a fuel composition that meets those criteria, then we go off and do component and rig testing to ensure that we get the characteristics that we're after, and finally we'll potentially do engine and APU testing, either on the ground and in some cases in the air. All of that information is compiled in the entire industry working as a unit, then reduce that data and approve the qualification of that fuel. In the lower left-hand side, what you see are five approved fuels that the industry has approved over the last five years, six years. Those are represented by the annexes. You won't go into the detail of what those are at the minute. I think Joel has a summary slide later that defines those. And then the next box up, there are some green boxes, and those reflect approaches that are in the process of getting final qualification. And at least two of those, we expect to be approved by the end of this year. If we're lucky, we'll get three. And then in the top of that section, three green boxes and another blue one. And those are processes that are, or conversion techniques that are sort of in process. And in the upper left-hand side, you see that we have about 15 additional processes that we expect to come into this activity. So in summary, at the end of the day, we have developed methodologies to ensure that we can produce fuels that meets aviation requirements. Those fuels can be made from a broad range of feedstocks, including starches and sugars, lipids, cellulose, and other unique hydrocarbon streams. And Scott will talk a little bit more about that in a second. Thank you, Steve, very much for the overview. Maybe to help our listeners and watchers, let's just do some quick basics. So what is the difference between a renewable jet fuel and the biofuels that most Americans are used to seeing and hearing about, which would be ethanol in gasoline and biodiesel? What's the difference between them? So commercial aviation, business aviation, and the military, their aircraft fly with gas turbines, jet engines. And those jet engines are certified to operate with a liquid fuel that we call jet fuel. It's often known as other names like jet A, jet A1, and the military has various names, but it's really a kerosene type of fuel. In order to maintain the operating certificate of all of those pieces of equipment, we have to ensure that any renewable fuel that we make meets those same criteria. So all of the renewable fuels or the sustainable alternative jet fuels that we're qualifying actually mimic, at a molecular level, the same composition as jet fuel. So they're different. They are still jet fuel, but they're different from biofuels that other people know about, like biodiesel or ethanol and some other gasoline additives, in that the molecules that are produced in those cases are not the same as the parent petroleum-based liquid. There is one slight difference. There are some folks that are producing HDRD or actual renewable diesel, and that's a corollary to what we're doing on the jet fuel front. Renewable diesel as opposed to biodiesel is a hydrotreated lipid product that actually has the same diesel characteristics as petroleum-based diesel. So we have created a different paradigm for aviation, and that is producing fuels that are molecularly equivalent to jet fuel. It's just that we start with biomass instead of pulling petroleum crude out of the ground. Thank you very much. If I could interject too well too, I think it is also important just to remember that the properties of the fuel are very different. The performance characteristics of a fuel at 35,000 feet are different than what the fuel needs to be for ground transportation, where we actually have to have low-temperature characteristics while it will not gel, if there's an engine issue where you can relight the engine. So there's just very different performance characteristics than a ground transportation fuel. Thank you. And so if I can actually use that as a segue, Carol, how would you tell us a little bit about NARA and the Feedstock to Fuels project that you recently completed there in the Pacific Northwest? I would be happy to. NARA stands for the Northwest Advanced Renewables Alliance, and NARA was created under a USDA grant that was a project that was led by Washington State University with several other partner organizations. And the goal of that project was to demonstrate that you could take what we call post-harvest forest residuals, so basically all of the woody biomass, limbs and branches left over after forest harvesting, that that could be converted to an intermediate product that could be turned into an isobutenol, so an alcohol product that could then be converted into jet fuel. So we were able to demonstrate using wood supplied by tribal lands and private lands in the Northwest. We were able to accumulate that feedstock. We were able to transport that, basically grind it all up, convert it, format that into an alcohol, and then convert that into a thousand gallon of jet fuel that met the alcohol to jet conversion pathways. And the capstone or culmination of that project was flying that fuel on an Alaska Airlines flight from T-TAC or Seattle Tacoma International Airport to Reagan International Airport or Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. in November of 2016. There was multiple university partners. We did demonstrate that the Bicycle Emissions Benefits of the project, it was a complete success. We also had about one-third of the USDA grant money. Went to supporting education and outreach and reached many secondary grade school instructors as well as students to bring up the next generation of scientists to help bring this bioeconomy forward. Cool. Well, thank you very much, Carol. So we're going to take a quick break, and then when we come back, we're going to start to talk about what might be actually done here on Hawaii with Dr. Turn. You can be the greatest. You can be the best. You can be the king conveying on your chest. You can be the world. You can be the war. Welcome back. So we're picking up where we left off, talking about sustainable alternative jet fuel and ways that it could actually be relevant to Hawaii and potentially made in Hawaii. I have a guest here in the studio with me, Dr. Scott Turn from the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute. And he's going to be talking about some of his research in this area, which is actually done specifically for the Aviation Sustainability Center of Excellence that Carol Sim introduced to us at the beginning of the show. So, Scott, over to you. Let me talk a little bit about your work. Thank you. Actually, it's not just my work. I am at the University of Hawaii, and there are other individuals there working with me. I'd like to get them on the record. Richard Ogoshi, Sharon Chan, Trevor Morgan, and Adele Yukonis have all contributed to this effort. So the main objectives of our activities have been to conduct, and maybe you can cue the image that I provided. Yeah, it's the one PDF file, an Adobe PDF file called Pathways. So while they're getting that up, I'll continue. So the idea here is that we've had a lot of agricultural land become available over the last 10, 20 years. And alternative jet fuels, of course, one option for putting that land back into production. And so one of the activities we've done is to do a literature review of possible biomass feedstocks that can be used for alternative jet fuel production, starting point, if you will, and then to look at what kind of conversion technologies might be used and what's the history of data available for those conversion technologies with the feedstocks of interest. So what we'd like to be able to think about is providing data and information needed to make good decisions. We don't have a whole lot of land available in the state, and so if we're going to try to put into a production facility and set up a high chain production process, we'd like to make sure that we do a good job the first time. So the image right now would be really helpful. Maybe just talk about what are some of the feedstocks you've actually looked at in the field? There we go. Talk about some of these feedstocks on the left-hand side of your image. Thanks. So on the left-hand side, let's just talk about the diagram in general, the left-hand side shows a number of orange, blue, and pink purplish boxes, and those are the different bio-resources that we've reviewed and looked at for their application here in Hawaii. On the right-hand side are the alternative jet fuels that Steve has talked about and from the different pathways that he identified. So these are all coming from different types of feedstocks, but they all come out and have passed through the approval process or are in process. So what we're trying now to do is look at that image and make connections with the resource on the left-hand side and the jet fuel on the right-hand side. If we look at the gray boxes there, the gray boxes are pretty much proven technologies. So if we can get materials that can feed into the gray boxes, then we should be able to produce the alternative jet fuel on the right-hand side. And so our reviews have been looking at the resources on the left-hand side and then what information is available for their conversion using the red and conversion boxes that are shown there. All of the resources on the left-hand side, you can think about those as providing four different types of feedstock material, either fiber, sugar, oil, or starch. And actually the starch isn't shown there because we haven't identified any of those suitable for Hawaii. So after we pre-treat some of them, we'd be able to produce the intermediate products shown in the light blue boxes and those would fit into the gray conversion boxes shown there. So our work has been reviewing the materials on the left-hand side and then what kind of data and information is available for their conversion. Thank you, Scott. And so of those crops listed on the left-hand side, not everybody watching the show or even, you know, not all of us are as expert in all those different agricultural products as you are. So maybe talk a little bit about, you know, what is a lucena as opposed to a fiber sorghum, you know? What are those referring to? Okay. And maybe bring the image back up again. So some of these, for example, we all understand what sugarcane is. Rice, we've done, actually the review has been for the tropics, so not just Hawaii. Rice is one of those that is present elsewhere and used elsewhere in the tropics. But some of the energy cane and banner grass, these are fast-growing grass species. Fiber sorghum is also a fast-growing grass. And the lower set of boxes, jatropha, camani, pungamia, and croton are all oil producers. And so each of those has potential to have a main product that could go for alternative jet fuel. And we're also interested in cold products because I think all components of the material has to be used. The other two that are shown there, which aren't agriculturally based, are urban solid waste and waste fog. And fog stands for fat, oil, and grease. So those are also resources and quite often are the kind of low-hanging fruit. These are, in the case of urban solid waste, people that have tipping fees or costs associated with their disposal. The fat, oil, and grease or fog isn't in that category because it actually has become a commodity now that's sought after. But all of these then have potential for use, and that's what we're interested in looking at further. Oh, thank you very much, Scott. And so we just have a couple minutes left, so we'll try and sort of bring all of this together. What you talked about is sustainable aviation jet fuel and all the different things that you can make it from in Hawaii. Maybe, Steve, talk a little bit about cost. You know, the pathways and the ASTM testing that you showed us looks very rigorous and looks quite expensive, so how is it possible to actually do this kind of thing at a cost that a commercial airline is willing to pay? Sure, and that's the challenge. So what we've proven over the last decade is that we know technically how to create synthetic fuels that are acceptable for use. And the challenge now is whether we can produce those at a price point that makes sense. What we find for many of the processes that I talked about and Scott alluded to, we find that food stock costs can be a large proportion of the total final cost. So what we put into the process is we put in these biogenic sources, pastels and greases, arches, et cetera. We run them through a biochemical process or a thermochemical process and convert those to jet fuel. And we find that the food stocks can be very high cost. So part of the challenge is finding low cost feed stocks or working on the development of feed stocks where we can get the cost down. And that's reflected in some of the commercial agreements that we see today. There's a company called Fulcrum, for instance, who intends to use municipal solid waste predominantly where that feed stock coming into the conversion facility can be free or very low cost. And in some instances it can actually be a negative cost where the waste hauler is paying the conversion company to take that waste. And that's one of the examples that Scott is looking at in the island is the use of municipal solid waste and construction and demolition waste. So that's really the challenge right now. And we're working with a lot of entities to determine whether we can get down to a reasonable price point. There are some policy mechanisms that exist today through the federal government, through state governments that with today's technology and today's feed stock costs and the policy support, we can get down to an equivalent level of pricing to petroleum jet fuel. But our long term goal is to try to be able to do that without having to use policy support in the long term. Thank you, Steve. And maybe Carol, if we could bring you back up. I introduced you as the new assistant director for the Aviation Sustainability Center of Excellence but you did just recently retire from Alaska Airlines and we're in the thick of this. So what have you seen in your experience that are opportunities as far as competitively priced with petroleum renewable jet fuel? What recommendations would you have for the Hawaii market to focus on? There are and I can't speak directly to Alaska Airlines involvement on various Hawaii projects but there has been interest in projects in the island. And one of the challenges in Hawaii is that fuel is just more expensive than it is on the mainland. So if we can look at producing a fuel locally that does not have to be imported, that will help lower some of the cost associated with the fuel. In the projects that we have looked at right now with petroleum prices the way that they are, it's really hard to get competitive with alternative fuels unless the facility is making various co-products whether it's got alluded to, whether that's animal feed or another by-product that can be sold on the commercial market that makes the price point for the refinery something that can offer to the airlines at a competitive price. We're still sort of in that chicken and the egg which comes first. We need to get to commercialization. Petroleum prices go up. We will see those price points come closer together and it is the biggest challenge right now. Great. Thank you. Thank you Carol and thank you Steve for joining us and thank you Scott for joining us here in the room. I'm told that we've come to the end of our 30-minute segment and so thank you for your time and your attention learning about sustainable alternative jet fuel today and some of the other options that are out there as far as renewable transportation. So thank you again and thanks for appearing on ThinkTech. Thank you.