With ambitious long-term energy goals, US Navy is at the forefront of alternative energy use and energy efficiency. Now, the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has partnered with Cobalt Technologies, the U.S. Navy and Show Me Energy Cooperative in order to create a sustainable, cost-competitive fuel for jet fighters using biomass feedstock such as switchgrass.

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Post tags: biomass, biostock, cobalt technologies, emissions, energy department, jet fighters, jet fuel, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, NREL, show me energy cooperative, sustainable fuel, switchgrass, us military, US Navy

Thanks to scientists harnessing the power of chemistry, you may one day soon fly in a plane fueled by plants. An article published in the journal Nature last week describes a new technique developed by researchers at UC Berkeley that can create biofuels powerful enough to be used as jet fuel. Created using bacterial fermentation and chemical catalysis, the amped up biofuel is ten times more powerful, and it can serve as a viable power source for large industrial vehicles and airplanes.

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Post tags: "sustainable energy", acetone, biodiesel, biofuel, carbon, chemical catalysis, chemical process, Clostridium acetobutylicum, ETHANOL, fermentation, green fuel, green jet fuel, jet fuel, Nature, plane, renewable energy, renewable jet fuel, uc berkeley, westfalia

Feeling the pinch of high gas prices every time you fill up your car? Be thankful you’re not the U.S. Military. Tired of wasting so much of its budget on fossil fuels, the US Navy has led the quest for greener alternatives – and scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) have developed a process that can transform abundant seawater into fuel for Navy jets. If the technology is rolled out their efforts could have a huge impact; in 2010 alone the Department of Defense shelled out approximately $11 billion on “operational energy,” the energy used by military forces in the execution of their field missions. That’s the equivalent of the entire budget of the state of Tennessee. And that doesn’t even include all the energy needed to power vehicles and military bases here at home.

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Post tags: alternative energy, alternative fuels, biofuels, department of defense, fossil fuels, fuel consumption, fuel efficiency, jet fuel, Naval Research Laboratory, seawater, US Navy

Airline mogul and billionaire Richard Branson just announced that in three years Virgin Atlantic airplanes will be fueled by waste gas from power plants, steel works, and aluminum plants. Within 24 months the company will be able to take waste gas from these industrial sites and turn it into aviation fuel for their commercial airplanes. The process will reduce the carbon footprint of Virgin’s airplanes by as much as 50 percent.

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Post tags: carbon offsets, green aviation, green jet fuel, jet fuel, low emissions jet fuel, Richard Branson, sustainable jet fuel, Virgin America, virgin atlantic, virgin atlantic sustainability

A huge milestone was recently reached at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida when an A-10C Thunderbolt jet took to the air running its engine on plant based fuel. The Air Force is the largest consumer of petroleum in the Department of Defense — they guzzle 2.4 billion gallons per year — and is hoping to wean themselves off foreign oil in the coming years. This flight was the first step in proving to their critics that measures can and will be taken to clean up the energy that fuels their aircraft.

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Post tags: armed forces, army, bio fuel, camelina, department of defense, eglin air force base, florida, ir force, jet fuel, renewable energy, sustainable jet fuel