Fly Green Fund and IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute have got the go ahead to start a "biojet from forest feedstock" project in Sweden.
Fly Green Fund, a unique Nordic service innovation that enables organizations and individuals in the Nordic region to reduce their climate footprint by flying on sustainable aviation biofuel has announced that it together with IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute will start a project aimed at reaching large-scale production of aviation biofuel in Sweden.
– We want to do more than just offer an aviation biofuel produced in California. Therefore, in our offer to our customers, we have promised that we together will contribute in developing local production of aviation biofuel here in the Nordic region. Now we have finally gotten approval from Vinnova to start up the Bioflygbränsle från skogsråvara (Biojet from forest feedstock) project, said Maria Fiskerud, CEO of Fly Green Fund.
The project is divided into three parts and the first one that starts now consists of a preliminary technology scoping study.
– In the preliminary study, we aim to identify the most promising technologies for sustainable production of biofuel from forest raw materials, and we will complement it by looking at business models to handle the higher production costs that biofuel has compared to fossil aviation fuel, explained Fiskerud.
The consortium has been awarded almost SEK 500 000 (≈ EUR 51 100) by the Swedish Innovation Agency Vinnova for the preliminary study, but the target is higher than that:
– This is a three phase call and our ultimate goal is that we have developed and demonstrated the solution we arrive at in pre-commercial scale and provide the conditions for the first major commercial facility, said Erik Furusjö, project manager from IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute.
– We believe that Sweden has great potential to become a precursor in the development of biofuel. We have the raw materials, recognized expertise within the field, airline passengers who want to travel in a more sustainable manner, political support, a forest industry that is preparing for a market change and decades of experience from biomass processing, said Fiskerud.
The consortium consists of stakeholders with insight into the entire value chain and with knowledge in technology, business models and sustainability. IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute, together with the Fly Green Fund, has initiated the project. The consortium also includes:
- Jämtlandsgas, a forest owner
- COWI and Luleå Technical University who are experts in production technology
- Swedavia, that represents end-users
- SkyNRG who are experts in the manufacture and certification of biofuel
– We cover the entire value chain already in our project application, but it is a project in the Utmaningsdriven Innovation (Challenge-driven Innovation) call. Amongst other things, this means finding several partners who share the same dream and vision as us – developing locally produced aviation biofuel in this first step, ended Maria Fiskerud.
