DOE BETO updates Multi-Year Program Plan

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office has released the 2016 update of its Multi-Year Program Plan, which serves as an operational guide to help the BETO manage and coordinate its activities. The plan also serves as a vehicle to communicate the office’s mission, goals and plans. It details BETOs research, development, demonstration, market transformation, and crosscutting activities for the coming years, and outlines how important these activities are to meeting U.S. energy and sustainability challenges.

According to the DOE, the MYPP includes three significant changes. The first major change is a revision of the BETO’s vision statement and mission statement to emphasize its key role in the bioeconomy.

The second major change relates to the office’s algae program. The BETO’s “Algal Feedstock Research and Development” program has been renamed “Advanced Algal Systems Research and Development.” The change was made to emphasize the entire biofuels supply chain. The section also includes a new algae farm design case with technical targets for algae biomass production costs through open pond cultivation systems.

The third major change is to the MYPPs section on demonstration and market transformation (DMT). The revised section includes an updated integrated biorefinery strategy with new milestones and provides revised analysis of the potential impact of meeting those milestones. Within the report, the BETO explains that past DMT performance goals were focused on validating production capacity in a given year. “Because the capacity of a pioneer project can be more than 100 times the capacity of a pilot project, these capacity goals relied on a disproportionately small number of pioneer projects. These pioneer projects face significant barriers outside the control of the office, such as securing financing or long delays in construction and start-up. Also, the efforts to validate technology and reduce risk at pilot and demonstration-scale were not reflected. Therefore, future performance goals and milestones focus on validating a specific number of technologies at various scales instead of a projection of production capacity,” said the BETO in the report. Updated goals are divided into three cycles. The first aims to validate successful runs of two biofuels and/or bioproducts manufacturing process at pilot scale by 2022. By the same year, the BETO aims to validate successful runs of one biofuels manufacturing process using a hydrocarbon fuels pathway at demonstration scale, and by 2023 have the successful demonstration of that technology enable the submission of a package for external funding sources for the design and construction of a pioneer-scale facility on trajectory to market. The second cycle calls for a validation run of one biofuels manufacturing process utilizing an additional pathway to fuels at a pilot-scale by 2025. Also by 2025, validate a biofuels and/or bioproducts manufacturing process incorporating another compatible hydrocarbon biofuels/bioproducts pathway at demonstration-scale, and by the following year facilitate the submission of a package for external funding for the design and construction of a pioneer-scale facility. The third cycle calls for the validation of one biofuels and/or bioproducts manufacturing process based on a different conversion pathways at demonstration scale by 2030, and by the following year enable the submission of a package for external funding for the design and construction of a pioneer-scale facility.

In addition to updating goals related to algal systems and conversion research and development, the MYPP includes goals related to terrestrial feedstocks supply and logistics research and development. It also includes information on sustainability, strategic analysis and strategic communications.  A full copy of the more than 250-page MYPP can be downloaded from the DOE website.