DOE honors Sustainable Aviation Fuel Grand Challenge team

If you’ve searched online for a plane ticket recently, you may have noticed new information on display: the relative emissions of your flight. But what if this dropped to zero? An effort recently recognized by the secretary of energy is focused on just that — decarbonizing not just passenger flights, but the entire aviation sector.

Sustainable aviation fuel

In January, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm announced the recipients of the Secretary’s Honor Awards for 2022. Anthe George, a senior manager in Applied Biosciences and Engineering, was named as one of the national lab contributors for the multiagency and multilab team which received a Secretary of Energy Achievement Award for their work on the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Grand Challenge.

According to the grand challenge’s website, it resulted from the DOE, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Agriculture and other federal government agencies collaborating on a comprehensive strategy to produce sustainable aviation fuels on a commercial scale. An announcement from the DOE Bioenergy Technologies Office congratulated the team and lists more than 43 contributors from government agencies and national laboratories. The grand challenge and increased production of sustainable aviation fuels are integral to reducing emissions and meeting national and international goals for decarbonization.

“With our partners, Sandians are working hard to advance sustainable aviation fuels and other biofuels, research which is critical to promoting the bioeconomy and combating climate change,” Anthe said. “The SAF Grand Challenge road map describes six areas where we need to focus our energies for SAF to become a reality.”

Read the Lab News article.

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