ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Energy Res.
Sec. Bioenergy and Biofuels
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenrg.2025.1550093
Future marine biofuels in the Port of Seattle region
Provisionally accepted
Swaroop Atnoorkar1
Kevin Zhang2*
Kelcie Kraft1
Kristin C. Lewis2
Emily Newes1
Dane Camenzind3Steve Peterson4- 1National Renewable Energy Laboratory (DOE), Golden, Colorado, United States
- 2Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, Cambridge, United States
- 3Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, United States
- 4Independent Contractor, Knoxville, United States
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Marine transportation, a vital global sector, emits 3% of global annual greenhouse gas emissions, which are predicted to increase in the future. Marine biofuels derived from biomass or waste sources like wood residue, waste oil and municipal solid waste can be used for decarbonization. However, limited studies have explored if sufficient marine biofuels could be produced and supplied to major regional ports given feedstock, supply chain and technological constraints. We fill this gap by evaluating the feasibility of supplying marine biofuels to the Port of Seattle. The Regional Bioeconomy Model (RBEM) and the Freight and Fuel Transportation Optimization Tool (FTOT) are used to build scenarios for simulating marine biofuel production in the Port region. We harmonized technoeconomic assumptions for RBEM and FTOT, input FTOT feedstock utilization and routing outputs into RBEM, and modelled conversion, feedstock, and policy scenario variations in RBEM. In RBEM, overall biofuel production was constrained primarily by the biofuel cost, and then by feedstock availability. Providing policy incentives and reducing permitting time frames alleviated these constraints and spurred the buildout of a robust industry through industrial learning dynamics in the initial years. With these measures in place, the RBEM results show that 100% of fuel demand at the Port can be supplied by biofuels with policy incentives and suitable technoeconomic conditions, but the addition of transportation cost considerations using FTOT led to 27.8% of demand being able to be met by biofuels at reasonable fuel delivery cost.
Keywords: Marine fuel, Decarbonization, Biofuels, shipping, optimization, system dynamics
Received: 22 Dec 2024; Accepted: 22 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Atnoorkar, Zhang, Kraft, Lewis, Newes, Camenzind and Peterson. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Kevin Zhang, Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, Cambridge, United States
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