Since We Don’t Have Flying Cars Just Yet...

Throughout the 20th century, people across the country expected that the turn of the new millennium would bring great technological feats, like flying cars. Well, it’s 2022, and who has one? I certainly don’t, though that would be great. Think of all the traffic we’d avoid! You could argue that the transportation industry itself is actually holding us back from this picturesque sustainable future— in Washington state, a staggering 45% of all greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation. Surprisingly, a key solution to launch us into an ideal, sustainable future actually relies on dipping into the past.

Biomass is just organic matter like trees, grass, or animals. We humans have used it forever—from burning logs for a fire, to lighting animal fat in a lantern. Now, we have figured out how to use biomass to fuel vehicles! Typical transportation fuels like gasoline use fossil fuels— liquids excavated from deep within the earth, damaging the environment. By using readily-available and renewable biomass like trees and agricultural waste, we can create more sustainable fuels that, unlike fossil fuels, won't run out before we get around to inventing those flying cars!

There has been incredible progress in developing readily usable biofuels—we have ways to convert trees, agricultural waste, and even algae into transportation fuels pretty efficiently. When I came to the University of Washington, I joined a research team looking at the possibility of creating a new biofuel production facility, called a biorefinery. The people on my research team amazed me—they were brilliant engineers and had come up with innovative new technologies to make some of the most advanced, low-cost biofuels ever created. I felt lucky to just be there! I knew this technology was cool and would allow major developments in the field, but one day I wondered— since all of these processes have been developed in the lab, what happens when we try to stick them in the real world? Is that even possible? No one knew the answer, and I decided that I wanted to figure out how we could take these incredible processes and get them out into the world.

My research considers what kinds of conditions have helped the creation of other biorefineries across the US. What sorts of policies are most helpful? Are there certain groups of people that tend to support these biorefineries? I started my work by looking at four different biorefineries across the US to understand how they got started. I considered what kinds of biomass they used, what kind of biofuels they produced, and what sorts of policies were in place when they were opened. Then, I interviewed different people involved in the biofuels industry to get their opinions.

This research kept leading me to three main types of policies— tax credits, incentives, and regulations, so I concluded that these types of policies are most beneficial to new biorefineries! They tell these facilities, “YES! Go ahead!” I also found that for these refineries to be successful, additional co-products like renewable plastics or chemicals have to be created alongside the fuels to get a bigger profit.

With all the innovations in biofuel technologies, it’s important that we don’t put the cart ahead of the horse. We have to make sure that the right policies and conditions are in place so that these new biorefineries can be successful. By creating a market where biofuels can replace fossil fuels, we can help to make the transportation industry more sustainable. Maybe one day we’ll all have flying cars, but for now we can focus on making the best possible future using the resources we’ve already got.

Caitlin Cruz is a Masters student in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington. She works in the field of biofuels— transportation fuels made from renewable resources. Her research examines what sorts of policies create the most beneficial conditions for biofuel facilities across the US, hoping to make the implementation of these fuels more widespread.