As airlines pursue decarbonization, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) has emerged as the most viable option. Airlines including Delta, United and American have set goals to replace their conventional, fossil-based jet fuel with SAF. Meeting lofty goals will require a diverse array of feedstocks, and wood fiber and pellets are promising candidates.&nbsp;At the 2025 North American Sustainable Aviation Fuel Conference, two panelists shared their perspectives on this new market for forest residues. The panel, titled “Decentralized SAF Innovation with Forest and Regional Resources,” featured panelists including Darrell Smith, executive director of the U.S. Industrial Pellet Association, and Eric Schenck, executive director of the Forest Resources Council in Minnesota.Forests at Risk&nbsp; One theme shared by both presenters was the crucial need for more industries that will utilize wood waste. Smith explained that the lion’s share of the U.S. industrial pellet industry is located in the Southeast, with 33 mills spread across 11 states, supplying 5,000 jobs across the U.S. The pellet industry utilizes residuals from the lumber industry and woody biomass located in the Southeast region’s plentiful pine forests. The paper industry was historically major employer in the Southeast, also known as the “Paper Basket” due to how quickly trees grow in the warm climate. In recent years, however, the paper industry has shrunk, depriving many communities of a keystone employer.&nbsp;Smith explained that the declining number of paper plants could indirectly cause deforestation. About 86% of forests in the area are owned privately, so if the owners cannot find someone to use their wood or a way to make money off of the land they own, they may consider selling it to a developer to build a strip mall or housing development. “These aren’t old growth forests, these aren’t national parks; this is land that is meant to grow pine trees to be used as an agricultural product, and [it’s] been doing it for a very long time,” Smith said.&nbsp;All U.S.-manufactured industrial pellets are exported for heat and power generation around the world—primarily to Europe and Japan—meaning that currently, none of them are currently used in the U.S. “We’re dispatchable energy in Europe,” he said. “The U.K., for instance, is totally off coal. They don’t burn coal anymore, and a large portion of the U.K. is running on wood pellets. My employee who lives in York, England—his house would go dark without wood pellets.”&nbsp;Shipped by the boatload, the industry pelletizes tons of waste wood material that the lumber industry cannot use, including mill residues, treetops, limbs, thinnings and lower-quality wood. “We’re not going out into a forest and clear cutting them,” he said. “That would not make financial sense, to turn the forest into pellets.” &nbsp;Smith explained that responsible forest management requires the thinning of forests to keep them healthy by allowing light to reach the forest floor, preserving animal habitats and reducing wildfire risk. The biomass is pelletized for transportation because it makes the material more energy dense.&nbsp;Smith explained that USIPA met with the Trump administration twice in the two weeks before the conference to ensure that industrial pellets are included in the $750 billion worth of energy that the European Union had committed to buying. “We want to keep sending these pellets overseas, because it’s a very valuable market for us,” he said. However, USIPA would like to find a domestic market for industrial pellets as well. Industrial pellet production has increased fivefold since 2012 and intends to keep growing, according to Smith. “Every time I talk to a state forestry [organization] since I’ve had this job for six months, the first thing out of their mouth is, ‘We need to build more pellet mills because we really need more [of them], it’s one of the only solutions to this declining paper market,’” he said.&nbsp;Although it may seem counterintuitive, creating markets for woody biomass is crucial to reducing deforestation. Because 43% more wood is grown than removed each year, woody biomass in pellet form has great potential for SAF production, Smith said.The U.S. can sustainably produce an additional 63 million dry tons per year of woody biomass, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Smith added that the DOE also estimates that approximately 2 billion to 5 billion gallons per year of SAF production could be possible from woody biomass. “Forestry residues are one of only a few sustainable scalable feedstocks that can contribute millions of gallons,” he said. “Wood pellet production is carbon neutral and compatible with advanced conversion pathways.”Dead Wood in the Northwoods&nbsp; The growing fire risk in Minnesota’s forests requires a solution. According to Schenck, state organizations do not have the funding to manage Minnesota’s millions of acres of forests. Currently, fire prevention measures are primarily focused on protecting existing structures, rather than stopping the fire in the first place, simply because the resources needed to prevent a significant wildfire from occurring are not available. “There are a lot of things going on in our forests that are creating big challenges for their sustainability and future health,” Schenck said. “And we’re trying to figure out how to manage for these things.”The Minnesota Forest Resources Council played a role in efforts to get a pellet plant established in northern Minnesota, Schenck explained. However, this effort did not work out due to the transportation dynamics. The state also had bioenergy as part of its energy grid in the past, but the power companies eventually moved away from biomass to power.However, SAF could provide an excellent use for the dead trees that are building up in the forests. Insects including the emerald ash borer, spruce budworm and eastern larch beetles have killed around 1 million acres of trees in Minnesota, according to Schenck. The number is likely to grow as winters get warmer and the emerald ash borer is able to survive farther north. “Without a market for that wood, which otherwise has no market value, we’re pretty helpless to do much with it,” he said. “Sadly, here’s what often follows that kind of disturbance: wildfire.”Severe weather events have caused mass tree blowdowns, resulting in millions of dead trees that present a significant fire risk. One such blowdown happened near Bemidji, Minnesota, in August this year, when 100 mph winds knocked down 9 million trees. According to Schenck, climate-driven disturbances like the one in Bemidji are killing five times more trees than are on harvested acres in Minnesota’s forests. In northern Minnesota’s Boundary Waters region, a popular recreational area, a blowdown was followed by a wildfire, which caused human safety issues and impacted the area’s usability for visitors. Because the council is “in the healthy forests business,” Schenck and his colleagues would like to see residuals get used up, rather than serve as fuel for wildfires.Utilization Opportunities&nbsp; Black liquor, a paper processing byproduct and tarry substance that contains the wood’s lignin, could be used as … could be used as a feedstock for SAF. “So, the waste product could potentially become a money maker for these mills,” Schenck said. “And … we don’t want to lose them because we don’t want to lose the ability to manage the forests.”Flying with jet fuel made from wood residues has already been done, he added. In 2016, the state of Washington, Washington State University, the state Department of Ecology, Gevo, Alaska Airlines and others worked together to make SAF out of forest residuals and flew the plane from Seattle to Washington, D.C.Schenck is hopeful that Minnesota will be among the places where the wood-to-SAF technology becomes a commercial reality. “We have all these different sources of woody biomass,” he said. “We have the logging slash, we have the weather-related disturbances and climate-driven disturbances. We have sawmill residuals; we have paper mill residuals. All the wood we really need for the biomass market is out there lying on the ground.”Woody biomass’ availability makes it a great feedstock option, compared to the feedstock development needed for specialized crops, Schenck explained. The carbon intensity of Minnesota’s forests is well understood, due to the council’s efforts in commissioning a carbon study. “One of the things we documented was that the forestry sector is the only net-negative sector in Minnesota’s economic sector,” he said. “We offset 13% of all the other emissions in the state. When you compare us to agriculture, we’re offsetting about two thirds of the agriculture.”The council is excited to see the work that the Greater MN SAF Hub is doing to develop a SAF industry in the state, Schenck said. Minnesota also has a SAF tax credit of $1.50 per gallon, which is in place through 2035. A bill has also been introduced that would add a supplemental tax credit of two cents per gallon for each additional 1% of carbon intensity reduction beyond 50%, maxing out at 50 cents more per gallon, increasing the possible credit to up to $2 per gallon. The state is also looking at a clean fuel standard that would create policy to make the state net zero by 2050.Although industrial pellets have found an important role in supplying energy internationally, they could provide a solution for transporting woody biomass and making it useable in SAF production processes. Schenck and Smith agree that forest residues need to be utilized, both to maintain forest health and to mitigate the economic impacts of a shrinking paper industry. &nbsp;Author: Katie Schroeder&nbsp; Associate Editor, Pellet Mill Magazine

2025-10-21 - Forest Waste to Flight Fuel (Biomass Magazine)

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Pellet and forestry experts explain the potential for woody biomass and pellets from waste wood residues to be used as a sustainable aviation fuel feedstock.

Forest Waste to Flight Fuel

Forest Waste to Flight Fuel

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