The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) last week announced $118 million in funding for 17 projects to accelerate the production of sustainable biofuels for America’s transportation and manufacturing needs.

“Biofuels are a versatile tool because they have the immediate potential to power our ships, trains, airlines and heavy-duty vehicles—a huge contributor to total carbon emissions—with a significantly reduced carbon footprint,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “DOE investments are helping to build out a domestic bioenergy supply chain that increases America’s energy independence, creates jobs, and accelerates the adoption of cleaner fuels for our transportation needs.”

The selected projects include pre-pilot, pilot, and demonstration projects that will scale-up existing biomass to fuel technologies with the goal of creating millions of gallons low-carbon fuel annually, as well as good-paying jobs in rural and underserved communities in nine states. The selected projects are located in nine states and Washington, DC, and focus on technologies including anaerobic digestion, conversion of cellulosic sugars to SAF, catalytic biorefining, among others. The projects also support the U.S. Sustainable Aviation Fuel Grand Challenge goal of enabling the production of three billion gallons of sustainable aviation fuel annually by 2030 and 35 billion gallons annually by 2050.

Award amounts range from $500,000 to $80 million, with most receiving at least $2 million. Among the awards presented is $1.6 million for LanzaTech to pilot an integrated field-deployable, zero-discharge, biorefinery concept for distributed production of ethanol – as feedstock for larger LanzaJet™ alcohol-to-jet SAF facilities – and biochar for soil amendment.