Viewpoint: Mining Forest Slash For SAF Feedstock | Aviation Week

Aviation’s push to cut carbon depends on scaling sustainable aviation fuel, and one potential feedstock is forest residuals—slash, bark, branches, small-diameter trees, thinning material and deadwood—now often considered costly to collect and manage. The article argues these materials could simultaneously support wildfire-risk reduction, renewable-fuel production, and rural and tribal economic development. It highlights Washington State University’s Northwest Advanced Renewables Alliance (NARA), a five-year, $40 million research effort that tested Pacific Northwest forest slash as biofuel feedstock. NARA and partners produced biojet fuel used in a 2016 commercial Alaska Airlines flight from Seattle to Washington, D.C. The remaining challenge, the article says, is getting to commercial scale and building supply chains that avoid slash-pile burning.