The transportation budget proposal announced today by leaders in the state Senate provides $6.5 million to serve as seed funding for a new sustainable aviation fuels research and development center at Everett’s Paine Field.
Snohomish County and WSU announced a new SAF partnership at a Tuesday press conference at Paine Field attended by an array of representatives from the county, university, industry and civic leaders.
WSU will serve as the research partner in the collaboration and brings a rich history of leadership in this space. The university has researchers from eight programs in three university colleges across its six-campus system working on SAF-related research. Together, with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, WSU co-leads the WSU-PNNL Bioproducts Institute. WSU and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also co-lead ASCENT, a national consortium of research universities, government agencies, national labs, and private entities convened by the Federal Aviation Administration.
The collaboration at Paine Field will have two primary components. It will create a fuel bank to store thousands of gallons of experimental jet fuels that, when combined with other university assets, will form the world’s first SAF repository with data management, storage, and distribution. In effect, the repository will do for SAF development what seed banks do for agricultural research. It will be the only facility capable of collecting, sampling, and distributing SAF on a large enough scale to be used in large aircraft.
Second, it will include a facility capable of testing experimental fuels on a jet-engine scale. The state funding is intended to serve as a precursor for a future request of the federal government to complete construction of new facilities required at Paine Field.
Paine Field is an ideal location for the SAF R&D Center due to its proximity to the production of medium- and long-haul aircraft; these aircraft account for 73 percent of all carbon emissions in aviation. Commercial aviation’s continued success is dependent on reducing the industry’s carbon emissions, which contribute to global climate change.
Dr. Joshua Heyne, a leading SAF expert and director of the Bioproducts, Sciences, and Engineering Laboratory at WSU Tri-Cities noted the significant impact of this applied research in the region and how WSU is a global leader in this research field.
“Washington state’s leadership in aviation and the environment was one of the reasons I moved across the country to join WSU. Here, the state is supporting efforts to meet global challenges while complementing existing strengths. WSU research has enabled the inception of global policies and new technologies to benefit state agricultural and industrial activities from Pullman to Everett. We are proud to partner with Snohomish County, our state Legislature, and industry partners to once again meet a global need with local interests.”
The Legislature will ultimately approve a compromise transportation budget to send to the governor in time for the scheduled April 23rd adjournment.