Fueling a Bioenergy Industry Revolution

U.S. Dept. of Energy provides UGA with millions in funding to bring sustainable biofuels to market.

As the world grapples with how to reduce its carbon footprint, it’s clear there’s no silver bullet for a changing climate. It will take a multifaceted approach to scale back fossil fuel usage and find more sustainable alternatives.

UGA researchers are working on promising pathways like bioenergy and bioproducts, forms of renewable energy and materials that could curb carbon emissions and provide alternative fuel sources.

“Bioenergy is essential if we want to move into a sustainable society and reduce or eliminate our use of fossil fuels,” said Debra Mohnen, Distinguished Research Professor and Georgia Athletic Association Professor in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, as well as the research domain manager at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Center for Bioenergy Innovation (CBI).

Bioenergy is a form of renewable energy derived from biomass, which encompasses any living organism, including plants, trees and animal waste. It poses immense promise in revolutionizing transportation fuel, heat, electricity and as a substitute for petroleum-based products like plastics and paints.

But there are real challenges to realizing its potential. Much of it boils down to cost and efficiency.

“Bioenergy is essential if we want to move into a sustainable society and reduce or eliminate our use of fossil fuels."
Debra Mohnen, PhD, Distinguished Research Professor and Georgia Athletic Association Professor in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, and research domain manager at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Center for Bioenergy Innovation (CBI).

Making Bioenergy Economically Feasible

“Certain biofuels are not always the most cost-effective operation,” said Robin Buell, Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar Chair in Crop Genomics at the Center for Applied Genetic Technologies in the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. “You have to reinvent bioenergy so that the economics are driving it.”

To advance bioenergy, there’s a need to find the right sources of biomass, produce a high yield and identify the best biological pathways to convert it into bioenergy and bioproducts.

At CBI, the multidisciplinary center headquartered at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), UGA researchers who specialize in production of plant-based fuels and chemicals are joined by experts across campus to position UGA as a leader working to accelerate the adoption of bioenergy worldwide.

Maximizing crops’ biomass is a critical piece of the bioenergy puzzle.

Sharing the Land with Farmers

Biomass needs to be able to grow on marginal land not being used for other forms of agriculture, so it doesn’t compete with food agriculture. The crops also need to produce high yields of biomass to make it a cost-effective endeavor for both farmers and the renewable energy industry.

Poplar trees and switchgrass are two of the most promising feedstocks for bioenergy, and UGA researchers are investigating ways to help both reach their potential.

“Poplars are one of the fastest growing trees and they offer a carbon sequestration benefit,” said Buell, who specializes in developing methods to change a plant’s architecture for bioenergy use. This can include genetic modifications like getting a plant or tree to grow taller and in more compact formations, so farmers can get higher yields from the same acreage.

One of Buell’s current projects focuses on reengineering poplars to produce varying amounts of leaves and wood to maximize the biomass of each tree. Poplar leaves can be used in sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), and the wood and branches can replace other petroleum-based materials, like paint. The poplar project recently received $15.8 million in support from the U.S. Department of Energy.

“We’re modifying genes with so much precision that we can control very specific cell types, under certain conditions, so that we can engineer entirely new plants to fit different bioenergy needs,” Buell explained.

CJ Tsai, Winfred N. “Hank” Haynes Professor and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar, also works with poplars and other trees, specializing in using approaches like the CRISPR gene-editing tool. She recently developed a method that drastically reduces the time it takes a poplar tree to flower, from about seven to 10 years to just a few months. This enables scientists to improve the efficiency of a poplar’s breeding cycle and target specific traits that will optimize poplars for bioenergy feedstock crops, including cold and drought tolerance.

Cleaning Up Our Skies

Aviation offers one of the best opportunities for biofuel innovation and carbon reduction. Almost all carbon from the aviation industry comes from the use of petroleum-based fuel, which means swapping plant-based SAF for traditional fuels would make a significant impact on the aviation industry carbon footprint.

The federal government has identified the airline industry as a target for reducing carbon output and has set goals to power 2% of aviation with biofuels by 2025 and 63% by 2050.

Those aren’t pie-in-the-sky numbers, Mohnen said. The U.S. is currently growing about 365 million tons of biomass each year and has far greater capacity for much more.

“The Department of Energy calculated that the U.S. has the potential to produce a billion tons of biomass a year,” she said. “That’s enough to produce 50-60 billion gallons of low-carbon biofuels and put a real dent in our carbon footprint.”