The U.S. military and two of the Pacific Northwest’s leading companies are putting their weight behind developing a new industry for the region.
Boeing and Alaska Airlines joined the area’s three largest airports — Seattle, Portland and Spokane — and Washington State University to launch Sustainable Aviation Fuels Northwest in 2010, the first group exploring aviation biofuels on a bioregional basis.
Aviation biofuels could replace 20 percent of jet fuel in less than a decade.
Officials from Boeing and Climate Solutions, the group that the companies and airports engaged to coordinate the effort, laid out their ambitious plans at the Harvesting Clean Energy conference last week at the Boise Centre.
Boeing’s Michael Hurd revealed the jet manufacturing giant has the goal of producing 1 percent of the world’s jet fuel demand — about 500 to 600 million gallons — by 2015.
That’s just four years from now. This Northwest consortium is working toward developing a plant to begin production.
Notice that the Boise Airport is not included.
None of Idaho’s industries is directly involved. But its universities, the Idaho National Laboratory and the agriculture industry are jumping on board.
With Mountain Home Air Force Base just 35 miles away, and thousands of acres of Idaho farmland ideal for oilseed production, there would seem to be an opportunity for Boise and Idaho to make a place for an aviation biofuel production facility.
A study the group cites says producing 475 million gallons of biofuel would create an estimated 23,000 jobs across the economy, add $4.1 billion to the U.S. GDP and contribute $445 million in federal taxes and $383 million to state and local governments.
That is enough of 50-percent biofuel blend to meet the Northwest’s aviation demand.
So what’s the downside? The entire program is based on the aviation industry’s goal to reach carbon-neutral growth by 2020 and cut its petroleum jet fuel demand by half by 2050 — while continuing a projected 5.1 percent growth of GDP.
Carbon? The carbon-neutral goal is based on the premise that rapid climate change is caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and that stopping it may reduce the effects of climate change.
That’s not a politically popular view in Idaho, or among Republicans or coal-state Democrats nationwide.
But Hurd pointed out that moving to biofuels also reduces our reliance on petroleum from unstable places like the Middle East. That’s why the military is making it a priority, he said.
And the aviation industry is moving forward on its own.
“Even if you are skeptical about climate change, the market is saying it’s concerned,” said Patrick Massa, research director for the Washington-based group Climate Solutions.
The consortium’s goal is to develop feedstocks that don’t compete today with food the way ethanol has done with corn and drive up prices.
In the long run, wood residues from logging and the forest industry offer even more opportunity down the line.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced an $80 million biofuels research program led by the universities of Washington.
Idaho will get some of that money, but how much may be determined by how much the state’s farmers, industry and government get behind this effort.
They will have to see what’s in it for Idaho.
“We need continued strong investment in research,” said Boeing’s Hurd.
Rocky Barker: 377-6484
