Project
BIO4A – Advanced Sustainable Biofuels for Aviation is a Horizon 2020 project which addresses the call LCE-20-2016-2017 – Enabling pre-commercial production of advanced aviation biofuel. The project will demonstrate the first large industrial-scale production and use of sustainable aviation fuel in Europe (HEFA), obtained from residual lipids such as Used Cooking Oil.
The project will also implement actions for the market uptake of sustainable aviation fuel, and it will investigate the alternative supply of sustainable feedstocks produced from drought-resistant crops such as Camelina, grown on marginal land in EU Mediterranean areas.
By adopting a combination of biochar and other soil amendments, it will be possible to increase the fertility of the soil and its resilience to climate change, while at the same time storing fixed carbon into the soil.
BIO4A will also test the use of sustainable aviation fuels across the entire logistic chain at industrial scale and under market conditions, and it will finally assess the environmental and socio-economic sustainability performance of the whole value chain.
The produced sustainable aviation fuel, that will meet the conventional ASTM jet fuel standards, will be used by commercial airlines in regular passenger flights, thus contributing to achieve the EU’s goal for the decarbonization of the aviation sector.
Started in May 2018, BIO4A will last until 2022, and it is carried out by a consortium of seven partners from five European countries:
- Renewable Energy Consortium for Research and Demonstration (Italy) – Coordinator
- SkyNRG B.V. (The Netherlands)
- CENER (National Renewable Energy Centre of Spain)
- ETA-Florence Renewable Energies (Italy)
- Camelina Company España S.L. (Spain)
- JRC Joint Research Centre European Commission (Belgium)
- ENI spa (Italy)
The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 789562.