Advocating for Public Policies to Promote the Development & Production of Alternative Fuels, Renewable Chemicals, Biobased Products, and Sustainable Aviation Fuels
Alternative Fuels & Chemicals Coalition
Track 2 Session Details
AFCC Conference Breakout Sessions
Breakout Sessions are 90 minutes, each one has one moderator with a maximum of four to five speakers.
Breakout sessions will be focused on the following five subject areas:
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Track 2: Sustainable Feedstocks and Biofuels, Driving Decarbonization
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Track 4: Synthetic Biology, Alternative Proteins, Regenerative Agriculture, Food & Fiber
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Track 5: Building the Biobased Economy Supply Chain
Track 2 Breakout Session Details​
Sustainable Feedstocks and Biofuels, Driving Decarbonization
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This Track is Sponsored by:​
Thursday, November 21, 2024
All sessions for this Track will be held in Annapolis 2
Session 1: 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM: Progress in SAF Production through Public-Private Partnerships and with Airlines
Moderator: Zia Haq, Senior Lead Analyst, DOE BETO
Speakers:
Producers while building or repurposing refineries to produce SAF at a high cost is considered to be the most capital-intensive aspect of the supply chain, each aspect requires significant investment and logistics. Relatively little commercial supply of SAF has been produced and deployed to date and SAF is considered to be significantly more costly than petroleum-based aviation fuel. The SAF leaders in this panel will describe the progress made but still need supportive government policies, ongoing commitment from stakeholders and public-private partnerships to push the industry over the finish line.
​​​Session 2: 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM: IRA Implementation and Clean Energy Transition for SAF: What Happened and What is to Come!
Moderator: Liam Donovan, Senior Political Strategist, Bracewell
Speakers:
The expert thought leaders in this panel in areas of agricultural feedstocks to tax incentives will engage in public policy overview and summary of the deliverables promised in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, and what really happened, the reasons, and what is anticipated in the very near future and long-term vision. Strategic insight will be provided on the progress made, salvaging missed opportunities, and building from those wins which occurred and still could occur.
​​​Session 3: 1:30 PM to 3:00 PM: Challenges and Opportunities to Secure Development Capital for SAF Projects
Moderator: John Akridge, CEO, Height Capital Markets
Speakers:
Securing development capital (DevCap) funding is typically a daunting challenge for SAF project developers. Development capital can enable startups to complete FEED, mature the business, secure critical contracts, and increase their resources to fully deliver their project to financial close. It is typically provided by an investor in exchange for an equity stake in the project and the developer plus project execution input. The panelists will consider opportunities and challenges to secure DevCap for growing the SAF segment. Federal agencies will discuss how they can participate directly (grants) and indirectly (loan guarantees) in capital formation. Is there really a viable path forward?
​​​Session 4: 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM : Gasification, a Proven Conversion Tool for SAF Must Transform
Moderator: Kerry McKenna, Global Director, Hatch
Speakers:
The global energy transformation is looking for alternative sources of fuels and chemicals that carry a lower carbon intensity than conventional fossil sources. There are a range of abundant and low-cost feedstocks that could be converted into biofuels and renewable chemicals however these have yet to be converted at scale. Gasification is one solution for the conversion of cheap, abundant, and sustainable cellulosic and waste feedstocks into alternative fuels such as sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
Gasification has used on an industrial scale for more than 150 years, supplying town gas across Europe in the late 1800's or at large scales for fuels and chemicals production. Currently large-scale gasification processes convert one form of fossil fuel to another, but the market is asking for change.
While there's great potential, gasification has faced implementation challenges in biofuels production. The process has an inherently high capital cost to process the lower grade feedstock into a higher value product. Furthermore, solids-based processes are known to be more challenging than fluids-based processes to develop and implement. We will hear from an expert panel who will discuss the opportunities, challenges, and solutions for Gasification as a pathway for alternative fuels and chemicals.
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Mike Schultz, PTI Global Solutions
Growing the Bioeconomy with Gas Fermentation
Gas fermentation has advantages over conventional processing routes, including lower cost operating conditions, robustness to fluctuations in feed rate and composition, and tolerance to contaminants in the gaseous feeds. However, a key challenge with gas fermentation involves the design of a cost-effective reactor system with high mass transfer coefficients for the gaseous feedstocks into an aqueous medium with various gas fermentation technologies.
Friday, November 22, 2024
All sessions for this Track will be held in Annapolis 2
Session 5: 1:30 PM to 3:00 PM: EPC collaboration in SAF projects
EPC's play a vital role in the implementation of Alternative Fuels and Chemicals projects. All projects need cost certainty to secure project financing and for this the industry turns to EPCs to provide guarantees on cost and performance. The balance between design development and premium for cost certainty is a key challenge for project developers to consider. It doesn't help to know with certainty that the cost of a wrap on the project will break your business case, but it also isn't fair to expect an EPC to not to cover its risk when the project has limited definition or includes technology with a limited track record. We will hear from several in the industry about the challenges of wrapping a project and the ways that uncertainties and risks can be addressed early for more successful outcomes. Note: we will bring in a panel of Tier 1 EPCs and contracting experts. They will be provided time to speak each with a specific challenge question to answer before a round table discussion.
Session 6: 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM: Production of SAF for the Airlines Supply Chain: Technology to Scale, Commercialization, with Good Policy​
Moderator: Steve Csonka, Executive Director, CAAFI (Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative)
Speakers:
The airlines will join technology providers for SAF to discuss the requirements for technologies to meet commercial viability while illustrating what it means to show SAF is safe, effective as petroleum-based jet fuel, but needs to show environmentally superior to petroleum jet. The panelists will discuss the near and long term SAF technologies for supply chain requirements such as cost-effective feedstocks, feedstock transportation and processing facilities, facilities to convert feedstock to SAF, blending facilities and equipment.