Biofuels Taking Flight

A new generation of petroleum Alternatives seeks to avoid the mistakes of the past.

Amelia Apfel | February 2011 | FROM THE PRINT EDITION

Credit: Photograph by Hayley Young

Tom Todaro, founder and CEO of Seattle-based AltAir Fuels, is pioneering the next generation of renewable jet fuel.

Tom Todaro has high hopes that by the end of 2012, a fuel refinery owned by his company, AltAir Fuels, will be pumping away outside Seattle. The input: thousands of pounds of locally grown plant material. The output: barrels of top quality jet fuel, no petroleum necessary. Within the next four years, the refinery could replace up to 10 percent of the jet fuel used at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport with biofuel.

Todaro, who runs two other companies in addition to AltAir Fuels, is in the thick of the second wave of a biofuels effort that has been building momentum in the Northwest for some time now. In September of 2008, the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Users Group was formed, uniting airlines and other partners, including Boeing and the Natural Resources Defense Council. All members of the users group signed a pledge promising that they will invest only in renewable fuels that meet strict sustainability criteria. And last July, Alaska Airlines, Washington State University, Boeing, Portland International Airport, Sea-Tac and Spokane International Airport announced Sustainable Aviation Fuels Northwest. The group, formed to research and develop local sources of aviation biofuel and funded jointly by its stakeholders, is in the process of evaluating various sources and pathways necessary to sustain a strong biofuels infrastructure in the Pacific Northwest.

Ethanol and biodiesel, known as first generation biofuels, are well established in the United States, but the crops that go into their production (mostly corn and soybeans) use large amounts of land and water and also take away from food resources. “People are starving and we put food in our gas tanks,” goes the environmental argument. And the Northwest has a checkered past with biofuels, with Imperium Renewables not living up to its early billing as taking over the oil industry.

The users group and development consortium are focused on second generation biofuels, which can be produced from a variety of nonfood sources, including algae, forestry waste and Camelina sativa, a hardy plant that can grow on land too poor for food crops.

The most significant advantage of “biofuels 2.0,” as John Gardner, the vice president for Economic Development and Global Engagement at Washington State University, likes to call them, is that they are