[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]




 
                   BIOENERGY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
                      FOR THE FUELS AND CHEMICALS
                               OF TOMORROW

=======================================================================

                                     
                                     

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                         SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY

                                 OF THE

                      COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE,
                             AND TECHNOLOGY

                                 OF THE

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                             MARCH 16, 2022

                               __________

                           Serial No. 117-48

                               __________

 Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology

                                     
                                     
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]                                    
                                     
                                     

       Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
       
       
       
                          ______                       


             U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 
47-058PDF           WASHINGTON : 2022 
       
       

              COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY

             HON. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas, Chairwoman
ZOE LOFGREN, California              FRANK LUCAS, Oklahoma, 
SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon                 Ranking Member
AMI BERA, California                 MO BROOKS, Alabama
HALEY STEVENS, Michigan,             BILL POSEY, Florida
    Vice Chair                       RANDY WEBER, Texas
MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey           BRIAN BABIN, Texas
JAMAAL BOWMAN, New York              ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
MELANIE A. STANSBURY, New Mexico     MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
BRAD SHERMAN, California             JAMES R. BAIRD, Indiana
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado              DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida
JERRY McNERNEY, California           MIKE GARCIA, California
PAUL TONKO, New York                 STEPHANIE I. BICE, Oklahoma
BILL FOSTER, Illinois                YOUNG KIM, California
DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey          RANDY FEENSTRA, Iowa
DON BEYER, Virginia                  JAKE LaTURNER, Kansas
CHARLIE CRIST, Florida               CARLOS A. GIMENEZ, Florida
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois                JAY OBERNOLTE, California
CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania             PETER MEIJER, Michigan
DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina         JAKE ELLZEY, TEXAS
GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin                MIKE CAREY, OHIO
DAN KILDEE, Michigan
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania
LIZZIE FLETCHER, Texas
                                 ------                                

                         Subcommittee on Energy

                 HON. JAMAAL BOWMAN, New York, Chairman
SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon             RANDY WEBER, Texas, 
HALEY STEVENS, Michigan                  Ranking Member
MELANIE A. STANSBURY, New Mexico     JIM BAIRD, Indiana
JERRY McNERNEY, California           MIKE GARCIA, California
DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey          MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois                CARLOS A. GIMENEZ, Florida
CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania             PETER MEIJER, Michigan
DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina         JAY OBERNOLTE, California
                         C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                             March 16, 2022

                                                                   Page

Hearing Charter..................................................     2

                           Opening Statements

Statement by Representative Sean Casten, Presiding Chairman, 
  Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and 
  Technology, U.S. House of Representatives......................     9
    Written Statement............................................    10

Statement by Representative Randy Weber, Ranking Member, 
  Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and 
  Technology, U.S. House of Representatives......................    11
    Written Statement............................................    13

Statement by Representative Frank Lucas, Ranking Member, 
  Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of 
  Representatives................................................    14
    Written Statement............................................    14

Written statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, 
  Chairwoman, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. 
  House of Representatives.......................................    15

                               Witnesses:

Dr. Jonathan Male, Chief Scientist, Energy Processes and 
  Materials, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)
    Oral Statement...............................................    16
    Written Statement............................................    19

Dr. Andrew Leakey, Director, Center for Advanced Bioenergy and 
  Bioproducts Innovation, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
    Oral Statement...............................................    27
    Written Statement............................................    29

Dr. Laurel Harmon, Vice President, Government Affairs, LanzaTech
    Oral Statement...............................................    58
    Written Statement............................................    60

Dr. Eric Hegg, Professor, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 
  Michigan State University
    Oral Statement...............................................    66
    Written Statement............................................    68

Discussion.......................................................    75

             Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions

Dr. Jonathan Male, Chief Scientist, Energy Processes and 
  Materials, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)........    88

            Appendix II: Additional Material for the Record

Letter submitted by Representative Sean Casten, Presiding 
  Chairman, Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, Space, 
  and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives
    Sarah Gallo, Vice President, Agriculture and Environment, 
      Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO)................    92


                   BIOENERGY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

                      FOR THE FUELS AND CHEMICALS

                              OF TOMORROW

                              ----------                              


                       WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16, 2022

                  House of Representatives,
                            Subcommittee on Energy,
               Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
                                                   Washington, D.C.

    The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:30 a.m., in 
room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building and via Zoom, 
Hon. Sean Casten presiding.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]


    Mr. Casten. The hearing will come to order. Without 
objection, the Chairman is authorized to declare recess at any 
time.
    Before I deliver my opening remarks, I wanted to note that, 
today, the Committee is meeting both in person and virtually. I 
want to announce a couple reminders to the Members about the 
conduct of this hearing. First, Members and staff who are 
attending in person and are unvaccinated against COVID-19 must 
stay masked throughout the hearing. Unvaccinated Members may 
remove their masks only during their questioning under the 5-
minute rule. Members who are attending virtually should keep 
their video feed on as long as they are present in the hearing, 
and Members are responsible for their own microphones. Please 
also keep your microphones muted unless you're speaking. 
Finally, if Members have any documents they wish to submit for 
the record, please email them to the Committee Clerk, whose 
email address was circulated prior to the hearing.
    I'd like to thank all the witnesses for joining us today to 
discuss the future of the bioenergy research enterprise. As 
some of you know, I spent 20 years in the energy industry 
before I came to Congress, but I'm sure all of you have read 
that 1998 New York Times bestseller Advanced Processes for 
Ethanol and Electricity Coproduction from Lignocellulosic 
Biomass. As I don't need to tell you, that was of course the 
title of my master's thesis, which caused me to spend 3 years 
building, operating, and modeling biofuel fermentation and 
energy recovery systems. And I think it's for the good of our 
planet and for my sanity that the technology has come a long 
way since then.
    In fact, in December of last year I was on the first 
passenger flight powered by 100 percent sustainable aviation 
fuel (SAF) flying from the greatest city of Chicago to 
Washington, D.C. Although that was a historic moment, we still 
have some significant barriers to overcome. Cost of course 
remains high with sustainable aviation fuels costing about four 
times as much as traditional jet fuel. But in addition to that, 
we simply don't have enough supply. Ninety-five billion gallons 
of jet fuel was consumed in 2019. In that same year, less than 
2 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuels was produced.
    I'm encouraged by President Biden's Sustainable Aviation 
Grand Challenge that aims to reduce the cost, and hence the 
sustainability, and expand production of these fuels, which I 
understand LanzaJet is taking part in by pledging production of 
a billion gallons of these fuels per year by 2030. So I'm 
really looking forward to Dr. Harmon's testimony and not just 
because LanzaTech is headquartered in my backyard. I also 
really look forward to learning about the status of the 
technologies to create these fuels and where there are 
constraints and opportunities in the upstream feedstock supply.
    I'm also pleased that the Department of Energy (DOE) sees 
this urgent need and is focusing its bioenergy research on the 
fuels of tomorrow. Sustainable, cost-effective feedstocks that 
can scale down and move refinement closer to the feedstock 
sources would enable a distributive model that revives local 
economies. As an example, the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and 
Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI), which also happens to be 
located in Illinois, works to create ecologically and 
economically sustainable feedstocks by using a plants-as-
factories approach that prioritizes efficient land use, soil 
health, water health, clean air, and of course emissions 
reductions.
    As we saw in the recent IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on 
Climate Change) report, the science is overwhelmingly clear 
that we have to get to zero greenhouse gas emissions as quickly 
as possible. Sadly, as we all know in this Committee too well, 
what is scientifically necessary vastly exceeds what is 
politically on the table at the moment. And it's why I'm so 
proud to be on the Science Committee where we get stuff done. I 
hope that in convening this hearing we can ensure that our R&D 
(research and development) dollars are spent wisely and that we 
prioritize some of the less-sexy, hard-to-decarbonize 
industries.
    Now more than ever we have to figure out how to decarbonize 
these hard-to-abate sectors, cement, steel, aviation, and 
shipping. These are sectors that use carbon and fossil fuels 
often not as an energy source but as a chemical reducing agent 
and/or they depend on liquid fuels that have the kind of mass 
and energy density that's very difficult to replace with other 
sustainable fuel stocks. Bioenergy is the unique renewable fuel 
source that can serve both of those needs, and I'm excited to 
hear from our witnesses where we can best target our research 
and development in this space.
    The IPCC report also concluded that bioenergy has 
significant potential to mitigate greenhouse gases if resources 
are sustainably developed and efficient technologies are 
thoughtfully applied. If we do this right, we can pinpoint how 
biofuels and biobased chemicals can be utilized where they 
would be most effective in enabling a transition to a 100-
percent clean economy.
    Finally, I don't think we can emphasize enough the impacts 
that most Americans and indeed all of the world right now is 
experiencing due to our overreliance on a globally traded, 
geographically limited, environmentally detrimental, and 
ultimately finite commodity under the control of some genuinely 
crazy people. This is not a problem that we can drill our way 
out of. No amount of oil that we extract from within our shores 
can make a meaningful dent in the massive price spikes that 
always follow the kinds of geopolitical volatility that people 
like Mr. Putin have created. We absolutely must pursue ways to 
produce more sustainable and domestically grown solutions to 
meet our energy needs.
    By doubling down on our innovation enterprise, we can 
electrify the bulk of many sectors and create sustainable fuels 
to power those otherwise hard-to-abate sectors. Knowing what we 
know today, we just can't keep doing more of the same and 
expecting a different outcome.
    I want to again thank our excellent panel of witnesses 
assembled today, and I look forward to hear your testimony. 
With that, I yield back.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Casten follows:]

    Thank you to all of the witnesses for joining us today to 
discuss the future of our bioenergy research enterprise. As 
some of you know I spent 20 years in the energy industry before 
I came to Congress. And I'm sure all of you have read the 1998 
New York Times Bestseller ``Advanced Process for Ethanol and 
Electricity Coproduction from Lignocellulosic Biomass.'' That, 
of course, was my Masters' thesis, which caused me to spend 
three years building, operating, and modelling biofuel 
fermentation and every recovery system. I'm thrilled to say we 
have come a long way since then. In December of last year, I 
was on the first passenger flight powered by 100% sustainable 
aviation fuel, flying from the great city of Chicago to 
Washington, DC. Although that was a historic moment, we still 
have some significant barriers to overcome. Not only is cost a 
prohibitive factor, with sustainable aviation fuels costing 
four times as much as traditional jet fuel, but we simply don't 
have enough supply. 95 billion gallons of jet fuel was consumed 
in 2019, and that same year less than 2 million gallons of 
sustainable aviation fuels was produced. I am encouraged by 
President Biden's Sustainable Aviation Grand Challenge that 
aims to reduce cost, enhance sustainability, and expand 
production of these fuels, which I understand Lanzajet is 
taking part in by pledging production of a billion gallons of 
these fuels per year by 2030. So I am really looking forward to 
Dr. Harmon's testimony, and not just because Lanzatech is 
headquartered in my back yard. But because we need to address 
and discuss sustainable feedstocks, and how to best increase 
the global supply of alternative fuels.
    I am also pleased that the Department of Energy sees this 
urgent need, and is focusing its bioenergy research on the 
fuels of tomorrow. Sustainable, cost-effective feedstocks that 
can scale down and move refinement closer to the feedstock 
sources would enable a distributive model that revives local 
economies. For example, the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and 
Bioproducts Innovation - which also happens to be located in 
Illinois - works to create ecologically and economically 
sustainable feedstocks by using a ``plants as factories'' 
approach that prioritizes efficient land use, soil health, 
water health, clean air, and of course, emission reductions.
    As we saw in the recent IPCC report, the science is clear 
that we must achieve zero emissions as soon as possible. What 
is scientifically necessary vastly exceeds what is politically 
on the table at the moment, which is why I'm proud to be on the 
Science Committee where we Get. Stuff. Done. I hope that in 
convening this hearing, we ensure that our R&D dollars are 
spent wisely, and that we prioritize these less sexy, hard to 
decarbonize industries. Now more than ever we must work to 
decarbonize hard to abate sectors, such as cement, steel 
aviation, and shipping. These sectors currently use the carbon 
in fossil fuels not as an energy source, but as a chemical 
reducing agent and/or depend on energy sources with the mass - 
and energy-density only found in liquid fuels. Bioenergy is the 
unique renewable fuel source that can serve both needs. I'm 
excited to hear from our witnesses where we can best target our 
research and development in this space.
    The IPCC report concluded that bioenergy has significant 
potential to mitigate greenhouse gases if resources are 
sustainably developed, and efficient technologies are 
thoughtfully applied. If we do this right, we can pinpoint how 
biofuels and biobased chemicals can be utilized where they 
would be most effective in enabling a successful transition to 
a 100% clean economy.
    Lastly, I don't think we can emphasize enough the impacts 
that most Americans, and much of the world, are now 
experiencing due to our over-reliance on a globally traded, 
geographically limited, environmentally detrimental, and 
ultimately finite commodity. This is not a problem that we can 
drill our way out of. No amount of oil that we extract from 
within our shores can make a meaningful dent in the massive 
price spikes that would always follow a world event that 
disrupts the global oil supply chain. This is yet another 
critical reason that we absolutely must pursue ways to produce 
more sustainable solutions, domestically-grown, to meet our 
energy needs. By doubling down on our innovation enterprise, we 
can electrify the bulk of many more sectors and create 
sustainable fuels to power those otherwise hard-to-abate 
sectors. Knowing what we know today, we just can't keep doing 
more of the same and expect a different outcome anymore.
    I want to again thank our excellent panel of witnesses 
assembled today, and I look forward to hearing your testimony. 
With that, I yield back.

    Mr. Casten. And the Chair now recognizes Mr. Weber for an 
opening statement.
    Mr. Weber. Thank you, Mr. Casten, for filling in for 
Chairman Bowman and for running what is our first hybrid 
hearing in about a year, I think. I'm glad--I, like you, am 
glad to see some faces here in person, although it's hard to 
recognize y'all without your masks.
    Today, we will examine a promising clean energy technology 
area that should play a role in all of our above--our all-of-
the-above energy strategy. Bioenergy is a broad term that 
refers to the use of biomass and waste resources to produce 
energy and related products like biofuels and biogas. The 
applications of bioenergy seem almost endless from sustainable 
aviation fuel that you talked about to recycling and waste-to-
energy technologies, bioenergy has the potential to benefit not 
just the U.S. energy sector but a variety of industries, 
including manufacturing and agriculture.
    The Department of Energy has led the way in driving U.S. 
innovation in bioenergy technologies, but, like most 
technologies we talk about here at the Science Committee, there 
is still work to be done and progress to be made. While some 
biofuels like ethanol are mature energy sources, we have just 
scratched the surface of what is possible when it comes to new, 
more efficient, advanced biofuels and bioproducts. That is what 
today's hearing is about, the next generation of bioenergy R&D.
    Along with Chairwoman Johnson, Ranking Member Lucas, and 
Chairman Bowman, I was proud to lead the DOE Science for the 
Future Act and see it pass on an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote 
on the House floor last summer. This bill contained a 
comprehensive reauthorization of DOE's Biological and 
Environmental Research (BER) program which conducts early stage 
research to advance our ability to use biological systems for 
energy technology. This reauthorization is absolutely necessary 
for the success and commercialization of next-generation 
bioenergy technologies. Without support and updates to BER's 
basic research mission and facilities like the Bioenergy 
Research Centers (BRCs), we could be stuck with the same 
conventional biofuels and bioproducts that may never be cost-
effective, much less widely adopted. The updated language in 
our bill provides guidance to DOE's activities and modernizes 
their research focus to align with current capabilities, needs, 
and demands.
    DOE also conducts bioenergy research, development, and 
demonstration (RD&D) activities through its Bioenergy 
Technology Offices--Office (BETO) I should say, which is housed 
with the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, EERE, office. 
While this office is focused more on mature technologies and 
their commercialization, it plays a valuable role in the full 
research and development cycle. BER in the Office of Science 
target the most fundamental industry-shifting breakthroughs 
with basic research, but BETO and EERE then help to take those 
breakthroughs and apply them to a technology suitable for 
widespread deployment. But as my colleagues have heard me say 
often, applied energy research on the government's dime has its 
limits. That's my 10 cents' worth at least. There are times 
when help for demonstration and commercial application makes 
sense, but the Federal Government has no business picking the 
winners and losers of the energy market.
    Therefore, there comes a time when every technology, 
bioenergy included--pardon me--should be taken off government 
support and allowed to either flourish or flounder in the free 
market. So while I support much of the work of BETO and EERE, I 
don't want my words to be misconstrued as an open invitation to 
expand these programs irresponsibly. I believe we should start 
with robust funding and support for the Office of Science and 
then allow EERE to capitalize on their most promising 
breakthroughs in partnership with the private sector.
    I look forward to today's hearing, too, Mr. Chairman, and 
learning how this basic research to commercialization cycle for 
bioenergy can be streamlined and improved. We have a diverse 
panel here with witnesses from national labs, a DOE Bioenergy 
Research Center, academia, as well as the private sector. 
Between all of those witnesses, I'm sure we'll hear about a 
bright future with bioenergy. So I want to thank each of them 
for testifying today.
    And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my 
time.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Weber follows:]

    Thank you, Mr. Casten, for filling in for Chairman Bowman 
and running what is our first hybrid hearing in about a year. 
I'm glad to see some faces here in person!
    Today we will examine a promising clean energy technology 
area that should play a role in our all-of-the-above energy 
strategy. Bioenergy is a broad term that refers to the use of 
biomass and waste resources to produce energy and related 
products like biofuels and biogas.
    The applications of bioenergy seem almost endless. From 
sustainable aviation fuel to recycling and waste-to energy 
technologies, bioenergy has the potential to benefit not just 
the U.S energy sector but a variety of industries including 
manufacturing and agriculture.
    The Department of Energy (DOE) has led the way in driving 
U.S. innovation in bioenergy technologies, but, like most 
technologies we talk about here at the Science Committee, there 
is still work to be done and progress to be made. While some 
biofuels like ethanol are mature energy sources, we have just 
scratched the surface of what is possible when it comes to new, 
more efficient, advanced biofuels and bio-products.
    That is what today's hearing is about: the next generation 
of bioenergy R&D.
    Along with Chairwoman Johnson, Ranking Member Lucas, and 
Chairman Bowman, I was proud to lead the DOE Science for the 
Future Act and see it pass on an overwhelming bipartisan vote 
on the House Floor last summer. This bill contained a 
comprehensive reauthorization of DOE's Biological and 
Environmental Research program, which conducts early-stage 
research to advance our ability to use biological systems for 
energy technology.
    This reauthorization is absolutely necessary for the 
success and commercialization of next-generation bioenergy 
technologies. Without support and updates to BER's basic 
research mission, and facilities like the Bioenergy Research 
Centers, we could be stuck with the same conventional biofuels 
and bioproducts that may never be cost effective or widely 
adopted. The updated language in our bill provides guidance to 
DOE's activities and modernizes their research focus to align 
with current capabilities, needs, and demands.
    DOE also conducts bioenergy research, development, and 
demonstration activities through its Bioenergy Technologies 
Office (BETO), which is housed within the Energy Efficiency and 
Renewable Energy (EERE) Office. While this office is focused 
more on mature technologies and their commercialization, it 
plays a valuable role in the full research and development 
cycle.
    BER and the Office of Science target the most fundamental, 
industry-shifting breakthroughs with basic research, but BETO 
and EERE can then help to take those breakthroughs and apply 
them to a technology suitable for widespread deployment. But as 
my colleagues have heard me say often, applied energy research 
on the government's dime has its limits.
    There are times when help for demonstration and commercial 
application makes sense, but the federal government has no 
business picking the winners and losers of the energy market. 
Therefore, there comes a time when every technology, bioenergy 
included, should be taken off government support and allowed to 
either flourish or flounder through the free market.
    So while I support much of the work of BETO and EERE, I 
don't want my words to be misconstrued as an open invitation to 
expand these programs irresponsibly. I believe we should start 
with robust funding and support for the Office of Science and 
then allow EERE to capitalize on their most promising 
breakthroughs in partnership with the private sector.
    I look forward to today's hearing and learning how this 
basic research to commercialization cycle for bioenergy can be 
streamlined and improved. We have a diverse panel here with 
witnesses from a National Lab, a DOE Bioenergy Research Center, 
academia, and the private sector. Between all of them, I'm sure 
we will hear about a bright future with bioenergy.
    I want to thank each of them for testifying today. And I 
yield back the balance of my time.

    Mr. Casten. I believe our Chairwoman is not present, so the 
Chair will now recognize the Ranking Member of the Full 
Committee, Mr. Lucas, for his opening statement.
    Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Mr. Casten. And I'd like to express 
my appreciation to Chairwoman Johnson and the entire majority 
staff for their work to hold this hearing in hybrid format. 
This is an exciting step toward transitioning back to in-person 
hearings, and I look forward to seeing the rest of my 
colleagues and future witnesses in our hearing room sometime 
soon.
    Even before serving as Ranking Member of the Science 
Committee, I've been an advocate for an all-of-the-above 
approach to our energy security. Bioenergy, which is one 
component of that mix, carries tremendous potential as an 
energy resource for our country, especially given our Nation's 
strong agricultural capacity. However, additional research and 
development, particularly fundamental research and cross-sector 
collaboration, is needed to unlock its full potential. But that 
must be done in a responsible, targeted manner.
    To that end, I was proud to help lead the Science 
Committee's bipartisan efforts to support the Department of 
Energy's Office of Science's Biological and Environmental 
Research, or BER, program by passing the DOE Science for the 
Future Act in the House last year. Among many things, this 
legislation modernizes the BER program and provides additional 
guidance for our Bioenergy Research Centers. It helps them 
address cutting-edge challenges for the expansion of the 
biofuel and biobased materials industry. We still don't have 
certainty on the path ahead for the DOE Science for the Future 
Act. It's been 4 months since Leader Schumer and Speaker Pelosi 
announced that we would go to a conference on a competitiveness 
legislation, and we're still waiting. The BER program is just 
one among many strategic and bipartisan initiatives that we in 
this Committee room worked on carefully together. I'd like to 
move it forward soon. So I look forward to working with my 
colleagues on both sides of the aisle and in both chambers to 
find a way to get this legislation across the finish line.
    I want to thank our witnesses for sharing their expertise 
and discussing strategies to address the most critical 
bioenergy R&D needs. Thank you, Mr. Casten. I yield back the 
balance of my time.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Lucas follows:]

    Thank you, Mr. Casten.
    I would like to express my appreciation to Chairwoman 
Johnson and the entire majority staff for their work to hold 
this hearing in hybrid format. This is an exciting step towards 
transitioning back to in-person hearings, and I look forward to 
seeing the rest of my colleagues and future witnesses in our 
hearing room sometime soon.
    Even before serving as Ranking Member of the Science 
Committee, I've been an advocate for an all-of-the-above 
approach to our energy security. Bioenergy, which is one 
component of that mix, carries tremendous potential as an 
energy resource for our country, especially given our nation's 
strong agricultural capacity. However, additional research and 
development, particularly fundamental research and cross-sector 
collaboration, is needed to unlock its full potential. But that 
must be done in a responsible, targeted manner.
    To that end, I was proud to help lead the Science 
Committee's bipartisan efforts to support the Department of 
Energy's Office of Science's Biological and Environmental 
Research, or ``BER'' program, by passing the DOE Science for 
the Future Act in the House last year. Among many things, this 
legislation modernizes the BER program and provides additional 
guidance to our Bioenergy Research Centers. It helps them 
address cutting-edge challenges for the expansion of the 
biofuel and bio-based materials industry.
    We still don't have certainty on the path ahead for the DOE 
Science for the Future Act. It's been four months since Leader 
Schumer and Speaker Pelosi announced we would go to conference 
on competitiveness legislation. And we're still waiting.
    The BER program is just one among many strategic and 
bipartisan initiatives that we in this Committee room worked on 
carefully together. I'd like to move it forward soon. So I look 
forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the 
aisle and in both chambers to find a way to get this 
legislation across the finish line.
    I want to thank our witnesses for sharing their expertise 
and discussing strategies to address the most critical 
bioenergy R&D needs. Thank you, Mr. Casten, I yield back the 
balance of my time.

    Mr. Casten. If there are Members who wish to submit 
additional opening statements, your statements will be added to 
the record at this point.
    [The prepared statement of Chairwoman Johnson follows:]

    Good morning and thank you Mr. Casten for chairing today's 
hearing, and for convening this excellent panel of witnesses to 
examine the role of bioenergy in our nation's clean energy 
transition.
    Bioenergy is one of the world's oldest energy sources and 
continues to play a large and growing role in the global energy 
system. Today, the Department of Energy is advancing research 
breakthroughs in bioengineering that will significantly improve 
the sustainability of bio-based products, including materials, 
chemicals, and fuels.
    Bio-based products currently displace approximately 9.4 
million barrels of oil annually, and they have the potential to 
reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 12.7 million 
metric tons per year. So DOE's research in these areas will 
likely be critical to achieving our future climate goals.
    I must also mention that my district in Dallas is a hub for 
domestic and international air travel, and there too, bioenergy 
has the potential to enable sustainable aviation. I have a 
vested interest in overcoming barriers to the wider adoption of 
these fuels, as this sector is particularly challenging to 
decarbonize.
    Lastly, I want to again highlight our Committee's 
important, bipartisan work that was included in the DOE Science 
for the Future Act, the Bioeconomy Research and Development 
Act, and the America COMPETES Act. Amongst the many impactful 
science and innovation provisions in the bill, you'll find 
bioenergy R&D provisions that aim to ensure that the U.S. leads 
the bioeconomy in the 21st century. These provisions, built 
from the ground up with input from the stakeholder community as 
reflected by today's witness panel, authorize R&D in biological 
system science and further authorize up to six bioenergy 
research centers focused on research in plant and microbial 
systems biology, biological imaging and analysis, and genomics 
to accelerate the research, development, and commercial 
application of bioenergy sources and biobased products.
    I hope today's discussion will examine how these provisions 
and any future legislation will help advance bioenergy's 
sustainability as a resource to meet the challenges of 
mitigating climate change while also addressing our growing 
energy needs. Moreover, I must note that the recent tragic 
events and their rippling effects across the globe have 
underscored the necessity for us to diversify our nation's 
energy supplies, not that this was a lesson that any of us 
would have wanted or should have needed at this point.
    I thank our witnesses for being here and I look forward to 
your testimony.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.

    Mr. Casten. At this time, I would like to introduce our 
witnesses. Dr. Jonathan Male is the Chief Scientist in the 
Energy Processes and Materials division at Pacific Northwest 
National Laboratory, or PNNL. He's also an adjunct faculty 
member in the Biological Systems Engineering Department of 
Washington State University or WSU and the Co-Director of the 
WSU PNNL Bioproducts Institute. Previously, Dr. Male served as 
the Director of Bioenergy Technologies Office at the Department 
of Energy for over 6 years.
    Dr. Andrew Leakey is the Director of the Center for 
Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation and the head of 
the Department of Plant Biology at the University of Illinois 
Urbana-Champaign. He joined the university as a Fulbright 
Scholar in 2002. He has received the Calvin-Benson Prize for 
Excellence in early career research and has been elected as a 
Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of 
Science.
    Dr. Laurel Harmon is the Vice President of Government 
Affairs at LanzaTech. She has over 30 years of experience in 
policy and technology development. In her current role, Dr. 
Harmon provides policy direction on legislative and regulatory 
matters and develops public-private partnerships to support 
research and demonstration projects. She also serves on the 
board of LanzaJet and is the Vice Chair of the Board of the 
Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials.
    The Chair now recognizes Mr. Meijer for the introduction of 
our final witness.
    Mr. Meijer. Thank you, Mr. Casten. And it's my pleasure to 
introduce a fellow Michigander, Dr. Eric Hegg, the Associate 
Dean for Budget, Planning, Research, and Administration in the 
College of Natural Science at Michigan State University (MSU). 
Although not located directly in my district, Michigan State's 
research, students, and faculty all have a tremendous impact 
across the State when it comes to the Science Committee and 
national research priorities. It's always great to have 
Michigan and its unique skills and needs represented.
    Dr. Hegg is an expert in biochemistry and molecular 
biology. Specifically, his research looks at how structural 
components of the plant cell wall can be used to form biofuels 
and bioproducts. And relevant to today's hearing, Dr. Hegg has 
served in a variety of roles within the Great Lakes Bioenergy 
Research Center (GLBRC) since it was first established in 2007. 
Most recently, he served as the MSU subcontract lead for the 
GLBRC before transitioning to his current role as Associate 
Dean. Dr. Hegg has been a Big Ten Academic Alliance Leadership 
Program Fellow and an Academic Advancement Network Leadership 
Fellow. And in 2019 he was elected a Fellow of the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science. His knowledge in 
the field of bioenergy and history with DOE's Bioenergy 
Research Centers are invaluable to today's discussion, and I 
look forward to hearing more in his testimony. Thank you, Dr. 
Hegg, for being with us today, for being a voice for all of 
Michigan. And I yield back the balance of my time.
    Mr. Casten. Thank you all for joining us today. As our 
witnesses are no doubt aware, you will each have 5 minutes for 
your spoken testimony. Your written testimony will be included 
in the record for the hearing. When you've all completed your 
spoken testimony, we will begin with questions. Each Member 
will have 5 minutes to question the panel. We will start with 
Dr. Male. Dr. Male, please begin.

                TESTIMONY OF DR. JONATHAN MALE,

        CHIEF SCIENTIST, ENERGY PROCESSES AND MATERIALS,

          PACIFIC NORTHWEST NATIONAL LABORATORY (PNNL)

    Dr. Male. Thank you. Good morning, and thank you, Chairman 
Casten, Ranking Member Weber, and Full Committee Ranking Member 
Lucas and Members of the Subcommittee, for the opportunity to 
participate in this important hearing on bioenergy research and 
developing fuels and chemicals of tomorrow.
    As you've heard, my name is Jonathan Male. I am a Chief 
Scientist for the Energy Processes and Materials at the Pacific 
Northwest National Lab. That's in Richland, Washington. I'm 
also an Adjunct Professor at Washington State University and 
serve as the Co-Director of the PNNL WSU Bioproducts Institute, 
which advances science to reduce environmental impacts of fuels 
and products. Previously, I served as the Director of the 
Bioenergy Technologies Office in the Office of Energy 
Renewable--Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
    In my testimony today I will focus on three main points 
about the state of bioenergy research and development and its 
importance to our clean energy future. First, we must expand 
our understanding of real-life biomass feedstocks. Second, we 
have a great opportunity to turn today's waste carbon streams 
into tomorrow's carbon resources. And third, bioenergy and 
bioproducts will be most important for reducing emissions in 
segments of our economy that are difficult to electrify such as 
aviation, marine, and industry.
    Decades of investment in fundamental chemistry, biology, 
catalysis, computational modeling, and other science 
disciplines have positioned us to convert biomass and waste to 
useful fuels and products. Much of this work has depended on 
DOE's world-class scientific user facilities like the 
Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) at PNNL and 
the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) at Lawrence Berkeley National 
Lab.
    To take the insights of fundamental science to scale and 
realize commercial impact, we must look to real biomass with 
all its variability and imperfections. Producing bioenergy and 
bioproducts at scales required to meet carbon reduction goals, 
bioenergy technologies must work not only for the optimal 
feedstocks we use in the laboratory but must be robust against 
variations during industrial processing.
    Consider corn stover as an example feedstock. Real bales of 
corn stover sit out in the elements and will contain everything 
from soil to twine to farming tools. Bioenergy and bioproducts 
facilities must have resilient processes to still efficiently 
produce fuels and products. In demonstration and commercial 
scale facilities, feedstock variability has led to undesirable 
outcomes. DOE created the Feedstock Conversion Interface 
Consortium, or FCIC, to begin to scientifically understand and 
address critical feedstock variability issues. FCIC researchers 
across nine DOE national labs provided critical insights of 
potential methods for detailed characterization of feedstock 
variability and understanding key properties of feedstocks that 
impact facilities' performances.
    To the second point, we can turn today's waste into 
tomorrow's carbon resources if we invest in the RD&D to 
characterize wastes and further develop conversion processes. 
DOE researchers estimate there is a potential for 1 billion dry 
tons of biomass to be converted to approximately 62 billion 
gallons of fuel annually, enough to supply all of aviation, 
marine, rail, and significant portion of the heavy-duty 
trucking. However, these analyses have assumed approximately 23 
percent of those billion dry tons would be derived from woody 
and herbaceous energy crops, which have been slow to scale up.
    If we expanded our view of renewable carbon feedstocks, we 
find significant additional carbon in our waste streams from 
municipal solid waste to food waste and waste gases to name 
just three. By developing science and technology to utilize 
these wastes, we can increase feedstock supplies, reduce 
landfill volumes, disposable costs, and reduce land-use 
impacts.
    One exciting potential conversion process for waste streams 
is hydrogen liquefaction. It combines heat and pressure to 
create a biocrude. A recent analysis by PNNL and National 
Renewable Energy Lab showed that wet waste have potential to 
produce 4.5 billion gallons per year of renewable diesel.
    Finally, bioenergy and bioproducts have the biggest 
potential to impact hard-to-electrify segments of our economy 
such as aviation, marine, and industry. The aviation segment 
remains far from viable for electrification of wide-body jets 
due to fuel energy density demands. There are commercially 
viable technologies today for converting fats, oils, and 
greases (FOGs) to sustainable aviation fuels, or SAFs, but 3 
million gallons was made in 2019. However, the U.S. aviation 
sector used 26 billion gallons of jet fuel in the same year. 
There are not enough FOGs available as feedstocks to meet that 
need. Recent research has started to use waste such as carbon 
monoxide, hydrogen, and carbon dioxide that LanzaTech will talk 
about in the collaboration with PNNL have developed 
technologies to efficiently ferment this mixture to alcohols, 
which can then be taken to SAFs. The technology will help meet 
the DOE, DOT (Department of Transportation), and USDA's (United 
States Department of Agriculture's) sustainable aviation fuel 
grand challenge of producing 3 billion gallons to the U.S. by 
2030.
    In conclusion, by looking at an array of biomass and waste 
feedstocks, better characterizing their real-world properties, 
we increase potential to bring bioenergy and bioproducts to 
bear. We can reduce the carbon intensity of critical but hard-
to-electrify segments of the economy and meet our goals for 
dramatic global emissions. Thank you for your time today, and I 
look forward to your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Male follows:]
    
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    Mr. Casten. Thank you, Dr. Male. Next, we will have Dr. 
Leakey.

           TESTIMONY OF DR. ANDREW LEAKEY, DIRECTOR,

                 CENTER FOR ADVANCED BIOENERGY

                  AND BIOPRODUCTS INNOVATION,

            UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

    Dr. Leakey. Acting Chairman Casten, Ranking Member Weber, 
and other distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, thank you 
for the opportunity to participate today. I am a Professor and 
head of the Department of Plant Biology at the University of 
Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Originally from Great Britain, I 
came to the United States in 2002 as a Fulbright Scholar. Since 
2020, I have directed the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and 
Bioproducts Innovation, or CABBI, which is the newest of four 
Bioenergy Research Centers, or BRCs, that the Department of 
Energy is funding. CABBI is comprised of over 300 scientists 
from 23 institutions in 17 States.
    Today, I was asked to discuss bioenergy and bioproducts 
research. Based on my personal experience, I aim to convey to 
you the need for next-generation renewable bioenergy and 
bioproducts, the scientific goals and progress of the BRCs, and 
the opportunities to train a diverse work force that can 
positively impact every corner of the country. I represent 
myself at today's hearing, and the views I express are my own.
    The transportation fuels and petrochemicals sector is a 
global, multitrillion-dollar-per-year industry, has enormous 
potential to produce abundant renewable bioenergy and 
bioproducts from plant biomass. And this would, one, reduce 
reliance on foreign sources of energy and improve resiliency to 
international conflicts or natural disasters; two, support 
farming communities in developing a more sustainable and 
resilient agricultural system; three, develop a more just 
economy in which additional individuals and communities receive 
economic benefit from the production of fuels and chemicals, 
including in rural areas; and four, to reduce the greenhouse 
gas emissions from fossil fuels that are driving climate 
change.
    Liquid biofuels have special potential to replace fossil 
fuels for modes of transportation where batteries are too heavy 
to store sufficient power and where charging infrastructure is 
not easily connected to sources of clean electricity. 
Sustainable biofuels for aviation, marine freight, and heavy-
duty long-distance trucking are notable examples. Decarbonizing 
the transportation sector of the economy is important because 
it currently accounts for the largest fraction of U.S. CO2 
emissions. However, further research and innovation is needed 
for biofuels and bioproducts to meet their full potential.
    The BRCs aim to provide the scientific discoveries and 
technologies needed to develop economically and ecologically 
sustainable domestic biofuels and bioproducts. This requires 
improved cropping systems that produce more and greater value 
biomass per acre while achieving sustainable greenhouse gas 
balances. It also includes more efficient technologies to 
deconstruct biomass and convert it into valuable fuels and 
chemicals that decarbonize our energy systems and products.
    In my written testimony, I detail scientific discoveries 
and cutting-edge tools made by CABBI. A few highlights from the 
last 4 years include engineering bioenergy grasses to produce 
substantial amounts of oil, which can be processed into a drop-
in biofuel, engineering microbes to greatly enhance conversion 
of plant-derived sugars into a platform chemical that can be 
used to make decarbonized detergents and lubricants, leveraging 
satellite imaging and computer simulation models to identify 
land that is best suited to produce bioenergy crops, 
accelerating research and innovation through advances in 
robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), as well as the 
sequencing and editing of plant and microbial genomes, and 
development of software for conducting techno-economic analysis 
and lifecycle assessment.
    More broadly, since 2007, thousands of BRC researchers have 
made discoveries leading to more than 4,000 scientific 
publications, 670 patent applications, 280 of which have been 
licensed, and 15 startup companies. A focus on technology 
transfer and commercialization is a notable feature of the 
BRCs. CABBI currently has partnerships with 11 companies, 
allowing us to learn the challenges faced by industry and 
provide solutions to them. BRC work of this type is greatly 
aided by sustained funding for research that spans the entire 
value chain, thereby forming the basis of the U.S. bio economy 
of the future. Additional benefits come from collaboration 
among the BRCs and DOE's national labs, Joint Genome Institute, 
and Environmental and Molecular Science Laboratory.
    Along with the other BRCs, CABBI is committed to training a 
diverse bioenergy work force. Our scientists contribute to this 
effort through many outreach and educational activities. I'm 
especially excited about our new internship program for 
undergraduate students from traditionally underrepresented 
groups.
    In conclusion, I came to America because I believe we 
created the greatest opportunity for scientists to help tackle 
clean energy, climate change, and sustainable agriculture. 
Twenty years later, my experiences working at a top land-grant 
university have greatly bolstered that belief. We all have 
reason to be proud of this country's bioenergy research 
enterprise and to be optimistic about what it can do to deliver 
many benefits for our society.
    Thank you, and I look forward to addressing your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Leakey follows:]
    
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    Mr. Casten. Thank you, Dr. Leakey.
    Dr. Harmon, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.

                TESTIMONY OF DR. LAUREL HARMON,

         VICE PRESIDENT, GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS, LANZATECH

    Dr. Harmon. Thank you, Acting Chairman Mr. Casten, Ranking 
Member Mr. Weber, and Members of the Subcommittee. I really 
appreciate this opportunity to share LanzaTech's experience and 
our perspectives here today.
    LanzaTech is a carbon capture and transformation company 
headquartered in Illinois with offices around the world. Our 
goal is to replace virgin fossil carbon with carbon from 
wastes, creating what we call a circular carbon economy. 
Because even in a decarbonized world, most of the products in 
our daily lives from clothes to jet fuel need carbon.
    Our technology uses a biocatalyst, a bacteria or microbe, 
like beermaking except we use bacteria and waste carbon instead 
of yeast and sugar. With this biocatalyst, we can turn all 
kinds of carbon-rich waste streams into products from the 
industrial emissions you heard earlier like steel mill off-gas 
to solid waste, including biomass residues and municipal waste.
    This technology is operating commercially in two plants 
today, producing ethanol from industrial emissions, and several 
other plants are in design and construction around the world. 
We have created custom microbes using technologies as you've 
just heard described, which are capable of producing over 100 
different molecules.
    Taking a step back, to advance bioenergy, we need a robust 
bioeconomy, which includes biological processes like ours, the 
use of biobased feedstocks, and hybrid pathways such as Mr.--
Dr. Male described that combine biochemistry and 
thermochemistry to maximize carbon efficiency. The bioeconomy 
can free us from virgin fossil carbon and also from the 
massive, centralized refinery model on which we rely today.
    Production facilities that are matched to the scale of 
waste feedstocks can be located throughout the country. This 
means they could be located in heavy manufacturing centers that 
can be located in rural communities or in urban centers. These 
improve the local environment, as well as creating high-quality 
jobs.
    LanzaTech has partnered with the Department of Energy in 
projects from basic research from BER, for example, through 
process optimization and scale up in BETO and the Advanced 
Manufacturing Office. I provided many examples in my written 
testimony, but here, I want to highlight DOE's role in 
developing collaborations. You've heard that touched on 
already.
    DOE has allowed LanzaTech to collaborate with world-class 
universities and with the national labs, and these 
collaborations are developing new basic insights. They're 
developing new computational and experimental tools that 
accelerate discovery. They're expanding feedstocks to new 
materials like waste CO2 or waste plastics. They are 
also intensifying the conversion processes themselves to 
increase energy and carbon efficiency and scaling them up to 
enable commercial implementation.
    One example is the alcohol-to-jet or ATJ technology that 
Dr. Male referenced, developed initially at PNNL, converts 
ethanol into sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel. 
After initial proof of concept, BETO funded a project for a 
pathway to show that sustainable aviation fuel could be 
produced from biomass using our gas fermentation and the ATJ 
process. BETO also supported PNNL to produce fundamental data 
that catalyzed additional investments by LanzaTech and industry 
partners to scale up the process and produce thousands of 
gallons of fuel. Some of that fuel, made using ethanol that 
came directly from steel mill emissions, was used in a 
transatlantic commercial passenger flight with Virgin Atlantic, 
a 747 flying across the ocean on steel mill emissions, a great 
demonstration of the circular carbon economy.
    The DOE partnership continues in a project to support a 10 
million gallon-per-year facility in Georgia, and in 2020, we 
formed a spinout company--LanzaJet--to commercialize this 
technology with support from Mitsui, Shell, LanzaTech, Suncor, 
and British Airways. This is a great example of DOE engagement 
throughout all stages of technology development and deployment.
    In closing, I'd like to emphasize three main points. DOE's 
RD&D programs must be technology and feedstock agnostic to 
advance all technically, economically, and sustainably viable 
pathways. DOE funding is, as I've emphasized before, needed not 
just for R&D but also for demonstration and deployment to 
ensure plants get built and are built where they are needed. 
And the expansion--the bioenergy concept needs to be expanded 
to chemicals and materials that require carbon and are made 
from petroleum today.
    Finally, I would like to emphasize that the DOE needs 
support also for the staff and the systems that it--will enable 
the Department to accelerate the selection and execution of 
these projects.
    Thank you again. I look forward to responding to the 
Members' questions.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Harmon follows:]
    
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    Mr. Casten. Thank you, Dr. Harmon.
    And finally, we have Dr. Hegg. You are recognized for 5 
minutes.

             TESTIMONY OF DR. ERIC HEGG, PROFESSOR,

              BIOCHEMISTRY AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY,

                   MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

    Dr. Hegg. Acting Chairman Casten and Ranking Member Weber, 
thank you. Thanks also to Representative Meijer for your 
introduction and to Representative Stevens for giving me my 
first opportunity to testify back in 2019. It is my honor to be 
here today. I am representing myself, and the views I express 
are my own.
    I am a Professor at Michigan State University and Associate 
Dean for Research in the College of Natural Science. 
Previously, I was the MSU Subcontract Lead for the Great Lakes 
Bioenergy Research Center. In all of these roles, I have 
experienced the critical partnerships that exist between the 
Federal Government and universities.
    Several Federal agencies have funded my research, including 
NIH (National Institutes of Health), NSF (National Science 
Foundation), USDA, and three different agencies within the DOE, 
BES (Basic Energy Sciences), BER, and BETO. My research focuses 
primarily on bioenergy and environmental research, and I am an 
inventor of bioenergy and bioproducts technology. It is within 
this context that I provide today's testimony.
    Federal support for interdisciplinary centers is critical 
to addressing society's grand challenges. Centers bring 
together researchers from disparate fields, stimulate 
innovation, and tackle complex problems in ways not possible 
with smaller projects. For bioenergy, this includes bringing 
together scientists from agronomy, genetics, and plant 
biochemistry to develop dedicated bioenergy crops; 
biogeochemistry and microbial ecology to understand nutrient 
flow; and microbiology, chemistry, and engineering to convert 
the biomass into biofuels and bioproducts. Overarching is the 
work of computational scientists who ensure that the strategies 
identified are economically and environmentally sustainable. 
Without large centers, new technologies developed in one area 
might not integrate across the entire pipeline. Centers are 
therefore essential to identifying sustainable and holistic 
solutions.
    At the same time, however, it is critical to maintain and 
even increase funding for creative individual research 
projects, hallmarks of U.S. innovation. Smaller projects often 
adapt more quickly to unexpected results, thereby opening new 
avenues of inquiry. These individual breakthroughs can 
themselves become the basis for integrated research. Single 
investigative projects are therefore vital to the success of 
large centers, as well as to the entire scientific enterprise. 
Examples relevant to bioenergy are found across the entire 
pipeline.
    In addition, discoveries made in one field can unexpectedly 
benefit other research areas, often years later. It is 
therefore nearly impossible to overestimate or predict the full 
impact of basic research. Once promising technologies are shown 
to be compatible in an integrated system, they must then be 
scaled. Technologies established at the bench, however, often 
encounter unanticipated challenges as they move to the 
industrial scale. Demonstrating they can be overcome is key to 
obtaining industrial investment.
    BETO has been important to my own research, enabling us to 
optimize our technology and begin the scaling process. The work 
has led to a new patent and an additional patent application 
and a potential industrial partner. To take full advantage of 
Federal investments in basic research, BETO and similar 
programs should be continued.
    Critical to the bioenergy research process is developing 
the work force needed for scientific breakthroughs to maintain 
U.S. leadership. Large integrated centers are ideal 
environments for educational development. They provide cutting-
edge research experiences while exposing students to 
multidisciplinary teams vital to industrial research. Authentic 
laboratory experiences also reinforce concepts learned in the 
classroom, teach critical thinking, and encourage creativity. 
Because many undergraduates must work to afford tuition, paid 
research programs improve diversity, equity, and inclusion, 
thereby significantly impacting the quality, quantity, and 
diversity of the future work force. Opportunities such as NSF's 
REU (research experiences for undergraduates) program and the 
DOE's internship program are hugely successful. Competition for 
these and related programs is often intense, and additional 
funding to expand them would significantly--would have a 
significant impact on the future work force pipeline.
    In the coming decades, there are opportunities for growth 
that will increase the impact of Federal investment in 
bioenergy research ranging from expanding long-term studies to 
increasing coordination among the agency--under the agencies 
under the purview of this Committee, including the DOE and NSF. 
This coordination would be especially powerful if expanded to 
include other agencies supporting bioenergy research, including 
the USDA. These proposed steps would ensure highly integrative 
and synergistic research that avoids duplication and promotes 
coordination in tackling society's complex grand challenges.
    Thank you for inviting me to testify and address any 
questions that you may have.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Hegg follows:]
    
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    Mr. Casten. Thank you to all of our witnesses. At this 
point, we will begin our first round of questions. And I will 
recognize myself for 5 minutes.
    Dr. Harmon, the recent report entitled ``Sustainable 
Aviation Fuel: A Review of Technical Pathways'' funded by the 
Department of Energy finds that the United States' refinery 
production of renewable diesel exceeds 300 million gallons, but 
only 2 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuels made with 
the same technology were produced. The report does say that 
there's sometimes that is a difference in production costs, but 
it says that the difference in renewable diesel production and 
sustainable aviation fuels is primarily driven by policy. Can 
you give us a little understanding of what those policies are 
and what policies we would need to get greater sustainable 
aviation fuel production?
    Dr. Harmon. Thank you for that important question. The 
first priority I think is to recognize that road transport has 
benefited from a long history of incentives to which 
sustainable aviation or SAF has not really been privy. Even 
when the California low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS) was 
developed, aviation fuel was not a compliance mechanism. And 
what that meant is that even though most technologies to 
produce SAF also produce diesel, industry focused on production 
of diesel, and much of that was provided to the California 
market. When the LCFS was opened up to SAF, then SAF production 
increased, including the attraction of imports.
    What I would also like to add is that what we do not have 
today are policies that selectively promote aviation fuel, and 
an example which is on the table would be the SAF blenders tax 
credit. And that's something that I would be happy to follow up 
or my colleagues would be happy to follow up with the Committee 
on.
    Finally, I would note that there are fuel policies which 
don't selectively discriminate against SAF but the RFS 
(renewable fuel standard), for example, is quite limited in the 
pathways that are acceptable. And so many waste feedstocks are 
actually not acceptable under the RFS and that expanding the 
RFS to include waste such as industrial emissions, waste 
CO2, would also have the benefit of accelerating 
production of SAF.
    Mr. Casten. So I'd love to follow up on that feedstock 
question. We've got this 95 billion gallons a year of jet fuel 
production and 2 million--with an M--gallons of SAF. With 
current production technologies that you have, how much could 
you ramp up before you would be completely maxed out on current 
feedstocks? And what technologies would you need to develop or 
they already exist--I know Dr. Male had talked about carbon 
monoxide, but I'm assuming that's produced from something else 
upstream. What does the technology look like, and what does the 
feedstock look like in a feedstock-unconstrained world?
    Dr. Harmon. All right. So I'll speak to alcohol-to-jet 
because the intermediate use by alcohol-to-jet is ethanol. 
Ethanol could be produced using many different technologies 
from a huge array of feedstocks. Very specifically, for 
example, using our technology, we can take carbon monoxide-rich 
steel mill emissions, making ethanol, turn that into SAF. That 
production of that ethanol is immediately commercial today and 
operating. We've produced--I'm not going to quantify, but we've 
produced millions of gallons of ethanol from steel mill 
emissions.
    Municipal waste is another example. Gasification of 
municipal waste can feed into our process and then produce 
ethanol, which goes into SAF. As we look farther out, 
CO2, coupled with the hydrogen produced from 
renewable energy, is also a SAF feedstock, again, by production 
of ethanol and then transformation into SAF using the alcohol-
to-jet pathway. So there's almost no limit to the feedstocks 
that can be applied to the SAF market using existing 
technology.
    Mr. Casten. Thank you, Dr. Harmon. With the time I got 
left, I want to just pivot to Dr. Hegg. And I have tremendous 
appreciation for what BETO does and the pain of that valley of 
death that you have talked about, you know, getting from lab 
scale to industrial scale. I wonder if you could speculate a 
little bit. Some of those projects get all through that, they 
get scaled up, all the bugs are ironed out and they still 
aren't economic. I'm a market guy, and I also serve on the 
Climate Committee. And one of the things we keep coming back to 
on that Committee is this International Monetary Fund report 
that says that the United States subsidizes the fossil fuel 
industry by $650 billion a year. I don't like picking winners 
and losers, but my goodness, if we keep subsidizing an industry 
that needs $650 billion a year to stay competitive doesn't 
sound like we're picking the winners.
    Do you have some sense, Dr. Hegg, of how many of the 
technologies that come out that we deem to be economically 
uncompetitive we only deem because the other technology is so 
heavily subsidized? How much would come forward if we took off 
those subsidies? Can you even guess at that?
    Dr. Hegg. That's a great question, and unfortunately, no. I 
mean, I simply don't have the data available to me to be able 
to speculate. But I think one of the other critical issues here 
is not only sort of the subsidizing that may occur but also 
this issue of ensuring that technologies fit through the entire 
pipeline. And so not just, you know, solving one--not just 
solving one problem while forgetting how that solution 
integrates into the entire system. But related directly to your 
question, I'm sorry, I simply don't have those numbers 
available.
    Mr. Casten. Well, maybe we could follow up off-line. I'm 
out of my time. I will now recognize Mr. Weber for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Weber. Thank you, sir. We had a hearing many years ago 
in 2017 that was focused specifically on biofuels. One of our 
witnesses was from the University of Michigan. So, Dr. Hegg, 
let's see if you agree or want to stoke up the rivalry with 
your institution. When talking about the billions of dollars 
spent on DOE's bioenergy research, development, and deployment 
efforts, he said, quote, ``None of the promised cellulosic 
fuels have become commercially viable even with subsidies 
amplified by mandates,'' end quote.
    As I mentioned in my opening statement, I think the Office 
of Science and the discoveries that originate there played a 
large role in the ultimate success of EERE. So, Dr. Hegg, can 
you give us an updated opinion on DOE's bioenergy research 
efforts and how the BER and the Office of Science can 
accelerate the overall development of biotechnologies? And, as 
part of that update--no pressure here. As part of that update, 
could you provide an example or a success story from your days 
at Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center or a project you were 
part of that started at the basic research level and is working 
toward being commercially viable? Dr. Hegg?
    Dr. Hegg. Sure. So I think one excellent example is when 
you think about designing dedicated bioenergy crops. And so at 
the basic research level, you can begin to design them for 
specific traits that make them specifically available--
especially appropriate for bioenergy. In one classic example, 
researchers in the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, not 
myself, worked out a system to make lignin, which is a 
structural component of the plant cell wall, degrade more 
easily. All right. So they were able to do that on the plant 
side. And then, again, thinking about this idea of the 
pipeline, though, you have to think not just about the plants 
but about the deconstruction.
    And so I was involved with a team sort of analyzing the 
impact of this new plant technology for how that it--how it 
might degrade more easily. And by performing this research, we 
were able to identify that in fact we could use lower chemical 
inputs to degrade the biomass into the structural components, 
specifically the sugars, so that they could be used downstream, 
and then of course, again, thinking of this pipeline, having a 
group of people that can then take that--the structural 
components that have been separated and turn them into biofuels 
and bioproducts.
    Overlaid on all of this and one of the challenges for a 
long time has been what to do with the lignin, again, this 
important structural component, which can be approximately 20 
percent of the total biomass but upwards of sometimes 40 
percent of the energy content and figuring out how you can turn 
that into useful fuels and/or chemicals.
    And so I would say that a decade ago the technology simply 
wasn't there to be able to effectively use that lignin. It was 
the old adage the only thing good to do with lignin was to burn 
it. But we know that's not true, and we know that given the 
right sorts of scientific breakthroughs, we can in fact turn 
that lignin into useful fuels and chemicals. And in fact we're 
working to do that across all of the centers. And we are in 
fact making great strides. So I think you'll see a big change 
once we stop throwing away an important component of that plant 
biomass.
    Mr. Weber. All right. Well, thank you. I appreciate that, 
Dr. Hegg. I want to move to Dr. Male now.
    Dr. Male, this Committee is a big supporter of the national 
labs, including PNNL. We've heard a lot about the Bioenergy 
Research Centers, but let's not forget there are so many 
different centers and projects and things going on at the 
national labs, the Environmental Molecular Science Laboratory, 
EMSL, the Joint Genome Institute, and Energy Frontier Research 
Centers (EFRC) all come to mind. So I want to give you a 
chance, Dr. Male, to talk about the end-to-end research 
collaboration. How does PNNL try to shape some of the 
activities that might not seem directly connected to bioenergy, 
especially those at EMSL to assist the BRCs. Or, alternatively, 
how does PNNL work with the JGI and EFRCs to identify shared 
goals and mutual benefits? You got about 30 seconds, no 
pressure.
    Dr. Male. So an example would be Joint Bioenergy Institute, 
JBEI, which is a BRC. They've done some phenomenal work on 
driving synthetic biology. And this is directly fed into BETO, 
which is doing the Agile BioFoundry, looking at synthetic 
biology for specific targets. JBEI has also had successes that 
have been gone on to the advanced biofuels, bioproducts process 
development unit, which is a pre-pilot process development 
unit, and so that has been a real stimulant in the bay area for 
new startup companies coming in with their ideas and ideas 
germinating at JBEI and beginning to get them from microliters 
up to 100 liters. So you can start to go----
    Mr. Weber. I hate to cut you off, but I appreciate you. 
You're pretty knowledgeable on that and thank you. I yield 
back.
    Mr. Casten. Ms. Stevens, you are now recognized for 5 
minutes.
    Ms. Stevens. Well, thank you, Mr. Acting Chair. What a 
treat to have you chair today's hearing. And as a Michigan 
native, of course it is a real pleasure again to welcome Dr. 
Eric Hegg from Michigan State University. I'm wearing my green 
for you today, sir, as--and that's for the Committee for us 
here today.
    And so, Dr. Hegg, you discussed the importance of advancing 
technology beyond the lab bench. I'll just tease at that a 
little bit more. How does this work effectively within the 
Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center? What have been your own 
experiences?
    Dr. Hegg. That's a great question. So at the Great Lakes 
Bioenergy Research Center, individual researchers work directly 
with their respective technologies office at their respective 
universities. And so once we have a nice technology at the lab 
scale that we think might be scaled up, we put out an invention 
disclosure. It is reviewed by the technology office, and if 
it's deemed to be interesting, important, and promising, then 
it moves on to file patent application and hopefully, 
obviously, then ultimately, a patent.
    Now, once we have a patent, it's important to note that all 
of the technologies offices within the various universities at 
the Great Lakes Bioenergy Center work together. And the 
importance of that is that an industry can come in and they 
don't have to deal with multiple technology offices. They can 
work it with one center basically and then pass the 
technologies that perhaps were developed at individual 
universities back and forth or sometimes----
    Ms. Stevens. Yes.
    Dr. Hegg [continuing]. Jointly between universities.
    Ms. Stevens. Yes. And so let me try and get both of you in 
here, too, because obviously, you know, we want to kind of talk 
about how critical it is that researchers from multiple fields 
tackle the R&D, the bioenergy enterprise. And so anything you 
can say on that would be important. And then tucked in that, 
I'd like to add that, you know, Department of Energy has 
significantly grown its footprint in the area of artificial 
intelligence. And this Committee, the Science Committee, has 
been highly supportive of that expansion. And, for example, we 
led on the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act, 
which was enacted in late 2020--this was last term--to 
authorize the DOE to support efforts in artificial intelligence 
that cut across multiple missions. So anything that you could 
also speak to on the Bioenergy Research Centers as a platform 
for exploring how artificial intelligence can be used to 
advance DOE's goals in bioscience would be much appreciated. So 
I sort of started with a macro question and then tucked in a 
micro one there, too.
    Dr. Hegg. OK. So getting to the first question, I think 
it's really critical to understand the interdisciplinary nature 
of course of bioenergy research. And I think all of the centers 
do a great job. I mentioned just some of the fields that come--
have to come together within the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research 
Center. And in fact at MSU there's almost 30 different faculty 
involved in the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, which 
together they constitute about 12 different departments and 
five different colleges. So it's really a huge group of people 
that is bringing--that is being brought together to ensure that 
you have this integrated process. Solving--you know, finding a 
solution in one area can in fact translate across the entire 
pipeline.
    So getting to your second question about the importance of 
computational work and especially artificial intelligence, it's 
outside my direct area of research----
    Ms. Stevens. OK.
    Dr. Hegg [continuing]. By actually a long way, but I would 
echo what you said, which is the absolute importance of this 
type of research, really any--or I should say this type of 
capability in really any sort of research project which deals 
with large and complex data sets, which in fact bioenergy 
research does. Being able to make sense out of this very 
complex, rich source of data, which comes from land management 
or genomics or looking at product analysis or looking at 
microbial pathways is really invaluable. And taking all the 
data sets which are available throughout the literature and 
somehow combining them in a meaningful way is absolutely 
critical.
    But I can--if you're interested in more, I can sort of work 
with my colleagues----
    Ms. Stevens. Yes, I mean, this is something we're going to 
continue to kind of tease out, too, on this Committee, and 
we're obviously running on the short of my 5 minutes of time, 
but that was a really helpful start. And with that, Mr. Chair, 
I'll yield back.
    Mr. Casten. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from 
Indiana, Dr. Baird, for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Baird. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate that, and 
I appreciate this Subcommittee hearing on energy. And, you 
know, I have in my district one of the laboratories for 
renewable resource engineering, as well as the Center for 
Direct Catalytic Conversion of Biomass to Biofuels. And so it's 
an exciting time in my opinion to be looking for some of these 
alternative energy sources.
    And so, Dr. Hegg, you mentioned lignin. Would you care to 
elaborate on that a little bit? Because I think the forestry 
industries, which is a real carbon sink, the trees I'm talking 
about, and so I would really appreciate if you could elaborate 
just for another moment on the lignin if we can use that for a 
source of energy. What is the--what stage is that in, and how 
far along are we or----
    Dr. Hegg. So I think exactly the state of it depends on 
sort of what direction you'd like to take it. So one direction 
you can take the lignin, which, again, is this complex 
biopolymer that's an important structural component of the 
plant cell wall, and you can sort of extract it and you can use 
it I'll say more or less directly as a polyol replacement. In 
other words, it's got a lot of alcohols on it, which can make 
it useful in certain applications such as various types of 
polyurethanes. And so that is a market which actually already 
has a lot of industrial interest and in fact one of my 
colleagues in the forestry department here at Michigan State 
University, Mojgan Nejad, collaborate quite a bit with a number 
of industries all over the Nation. And so that is--I wouldn't 
call it a mature technology, but it is already sort of on that 
road to being able to make an important contribution to the 
overall bioeconomy.
    Now, another thing that you can do with that lignin is 
depolymerize it into its constituent monomers and then use 
those monomers either as a fuel directly or to be built up into 
other types of useful bioproducts. That technology is coming 
along. It is still much more nascent. It's challenging. It's 
challenging to break apart lignin into monomers and to keep 
those and to then separate those monomers and stop them from 
reacting with each other in a sort of uncontrolled way. And so 
that's the challenge. Chemists are learning to do that, and 
they've made great strides over the last, you know, I would say 
5 years. There's a long way to go, but they are really making 
great, great progress. So I think that's--you know, I think 
that will get to the same technology level in the next 5 to 10 
years. At least I'm hopeful it will.
    Mr. Baird. Super. I'm glad to hear that. So would you have 
any further comments about the Centers for Direct Catalytic 
Conversion of Biomass just to give you the opportunity to make 
a comment about those centers--those C3Bios?
    Dr. Hegg. Yes, unfortunately, I don't have enough of 
experience with them to be able to speak with a great degree of 
authority.
    Mr. Baird. Dr. Leakey, do you have any comments on either 
one of the questions that I asked?
    Dr. Leakey. So the CABBI research portfolio focuses heavily 
on a----
    Mr. Baird. Yes.
    Dr. Leakey [continuing]. Complementary approach----
    Mr. Baird. Yes.
    Dr. Leakey [continuing]. To the work that Dr. Hegg 
described on lignin, and so we focus largely on producing oils 
within the plant that can be easily extracted as a drop in 
biofuel that increases the value of the biomass per acre. So 
that would complement the approaches that you described.
    Mr. Baird. Well, the advances we've made in biotechnology 
in recent decades are tremendous, and it really enhances our 
ability to provide food and fiber and mitigate some of this 
climate change. So anyone else have a comment? If not, I thank 
you, and I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Casten. We are going to continue with the Ph.D. caucus. 
And Dr. McNerney from California is now recognized for 5 
minutes.
    Mr. McNerney. I thank the Chairman for that recognition and 
the hearing, and I thank the witnesses. This is really 
interesting and important, and I'm glad to be a part of it.
    Dr. Leakey, you discussed how artificial intelligence can 
be used to increase efficiencies in the traditionally laborious 
RD&D processes, so I'm going to follow up on Ms. Stevens' 
question. How is AI beneficial to bioenergy research and 
development and how can the government support further use of 
this technology?
    Dr. Leakey. Sure, thank you very much. Yes, so scientists 
within CABBI are using machine learning to help address a very 
broad range of questions and accelerate our research progress. 
To give you some flavor for it, this includes designing new 
enzymes and metabolic pathways, automating normally laborious 
and inefficient steps in genome editing, as well as 
automatically analyzing images from microscopes, drones, and 
satellites to much more rapidly identify which crops and 
locations bioenergy would be--would perform best for bioenergy 
production.
    I will say that there are some--this is a good example of 
there being some valuable interactions with Federal funding 
agencies beyond DOE, so the University of Illinois, for 
instance, leads two artificial intelligence research 
institutes, one funded by USDA, one funded by the National 
Science Foundation. And I'm pleased to say that even though 
those are just over a year old, we have got significant overlap 
in scientists between this project and CABBI and real valuable 
relationships building there. And we have some examples of AI 
accelerating progress particularly on our microbial platforms 
by up to an order of magnitude. So I think it's a really----
    Mr. McNerney. It sounds like it's not only a research tool, 
but it's a collaboration tool, so I'm glad to hear that.
    Dr. Leakey. Yes.
    Mr. McNerney. Dr. Male, the climate benefits of bioenergy 
are still widely debated with different conclusions about the 
carbon intensity of biomass feedstocks. Do you think there are 
gaps in the lifecycle assessments of biomass feedstocks?
    Dr. Male. The lifecycle assessment modeling is still an 
evolving field. I'll give you an example. Particularly where 
products are perhaps used multiple times, we have not seen that 
really come to the fore. And there's a real opportunity to 
actually be more transparent and have discussions about what 
are the assumptions in anyone's models, the boundary conditions 
in the models, and how it leads to a certain conclusion. And 
it's OK to have discourse. That stimulates overall for the 
entire community of lifecycle assessment modeling and land-use 
change modeling to actually move forward.
    Mr. McNerney. Well, what barriers are remaining for 
conducting the kind of research--for creating partnerships for 
commercial development projects?
    Dr. Male. Barriers for commercial--oh, with regard to the 
lifecycle assessments or with regard----
    Mr. McNerney. Right.
    Dr. Male [continuing]. Or just to commercialization in 
general?
    Mr. McNerney. Well, let's talk about the lifecycle 
assessments.
    Dr. Male. With regard to lifecycle assessments, looking at 
it more holistically, that is, not just about greenhouse gas 
emissions, it's a myriad of other metrics of sustainability or 
sustainability indicators such as water, the quality of the 
soil, how that is treated, just to give you two examples. And 
so it is a multifaceted challenge, and you are doing tradeoffs 
across these numerous facets or success metrics.
    Mr. McNerney. Thank you.
    Dr. Male. So having a program where you can put forth in a 
transparent manner how you assessed what your crop did in the 
field and the water usage and the energy usage in your process 
and engage people like the Roundtable for Sustainable 
Biomaterials is an excellent way to go forward.
    Mr. McNerney. OK, thank you. I believe I'm about out of 
time, so I'm going to yield back to the Chair.
    Mr. Casten. I'm looking for Mr. Meijer, and I don't see 
him, so the Chair will now recognize Mr. Obernolte from 
California.
    Mr. Obernolte. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank 
you to the witnesses for a very fascinating hearing.
    I'd like to ask a couple questions about the need to 
increase feedstock supplies because that's been kind of a 
recurrent theme in our hearing today. And as a Representative 
from California, as I note that the Chairman is, it's no 
surprise that we've had a couple of worst years of wildfires in 
the entire State's history. And one of the things that's been 
discovered is that our traditional approach to forest 
management is insufficient and we're going to have to pay a lot 
further attention to things like fuels reduction in the future 
if we hope to tame this activity.
    So, you know, I'm interested in the fact that when we do 
fuel reduction in the forests, we come up with a lot of biomass 
but we really don't have anything to do with them. You know, we 
try and create energy from them, but that creates a lot of 
soot. It's very inefficient. That process requires government 
controls.
    I'm wondering if that can't have--that biomass supply can't 
have a role to play in maybe the production of aviation fuel 
through the processes that we've been talking about? So let me 
start with Dr. Male since you had mentioned, you know, the need 
for expansion of the feedstock supply. Is there some kind of 
process that this forest-based fuels reduction biomass can be 
used for that purpose?
    Dr. Male. There is, and particularly if you look at managed 
forests. And a key aspect, though, is you always have to bear 
in mind the accessibility to that particular resource. So if 
you're doing thinning or putting in fire corridors, getting 
that resource from that site has traditionally been--if you 
have logging roads, that's fine. If you don't, it's a 
challenge. And so that has pushed the research on can we have 
systems that are modular and can be distributed to those 
locations to make an intermediate that can then subsequently be 
taken from there that doesn't create the soot that you 
mentioned?
    Mr. Obernolte. Right. Yes. I mean, obviously, that's going 
to be a recurrent theme no matter what use you put that biomass 
to, but, you know, given the fact that that's a problem we have 
to solve anyway, I'm kind of optimistic that maybe, you know, a 
pathway can be found there.
    And Dr. Leakey, you also brought this up in your testimony. 
Do you think that that--that the use of this forest-based 
biomass might be kind of a substitute for actual food stock 
crops?
    Dr. Leakey. So the work within CABBI focuses specifically 
on the use of grasses as our feedstock, and so I can't testify 
directly to the use of woody feedstocks.
    Mr. Obernolte. OK. Dr. Male, going back to you, you were 
talking about how difficult it is to create an industrial 
process to make a feedstock-based fuel that allows for 
variability in the feedstock. And obviously, if we're talking, 
you know, with fuels that have been reduced from forests, 
there's a lot of variability there. What do you think we can do 
to overcome that particular problem?
    Dr. Male. I think what we can do is recognize the issue 
that there is clearly--if you think about Gaussian 
distributions, take any parameter of a feedstock like particle 
size. There is a particle size distribution. And it's not good 
enough just to sit on top of the mean particle size. It shows 
you a technical feasibility of the process. But really you want 
to go out--perhaps if you want to be 95 percent sure you can 
deal with all the variability in that wood, you can go out two 
sigma either side of that mean to look at the tails of that 
distribution where the quality varies greatly and show that 
your process is both resilient and robust. And then that will 
allow your process to transition to industry with a greater 
certainty.
    Mr. Obernolte. Right. OK. Well, thank you. You know, it's--
I'm really happy that we're having this discussion because we 
have a big problem with fuels reduction in the Western United 
States and what to do with that biomass because if we--I mean, 
we can burn it, which will just the de-sequester the carbon 
that's stored in it. We can let it decompose, but that over a 
longer amount of time also de-sequesters the carbon. Or we can 
figure out some way of making productive use of that carbon 
that is--results in avoided carbon through other channels. And 
I think that turning that into a feedstock for an organic-based 
fuel is a really good solution, so I'd love to see more 
attention paid to that. I'd love to see some more research. And 
I'm very happy that this Committee is taking a leadership role 
in that.
    Mr. Chair, I yield back.
    Mr. Casten. Thank you. And not seeing Mr. Lamb, the 
gentlelady from North Carolina, Ms. Ross, is now recognized for 
5 minutes. Oh, and before I introduce her, I apologize for not 
recognizing the other Member of our Ph.D. caucus, Dr. 
Obernolte. So apologies for the missed--Ms. Ross, you're now 
recognized.
    Ms. Ross. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I'm a member of the 
lawyer caucus. I want to thank Chairman Bowman for holding this 
meeting. And as a member of the lawyer caucus, I represented 
several different bioenergy clients in North Carolina, 
including those who used wood waste, those who turned hog poop 
into power, and I also represented people who dealt with 
municipal waste and turned that into energy.
    And I'm very interested to hear the insights from our 
panelists and the status and the pace of DOE bioenergy 
research. And obviously, more research and development coupled 
with environmental justice and economic considerations are 
needed to ensure that we can maximize the use of bioenergy to 
our benefit.
    And as I said, I did represent a client that dealt with 
wood waste. And wood waste has been both a positive and a 
controversial issue in North Carolina. And the production 
particularly of wood pellets has created some environmental 
justice concerns that need to be considered as we move forward. 
Specifically, some of the wood pellet plants in North Carolina 
and across the United States are located in rural and low-
income and predominantly minority areas. And the plants can 
produce fine particle pollution, carbon monoxide, and can 
degrade the local air quality. These effects disproportionately 
harm minority and disadvantaged communities given their 
proximity to the plants, putting them at higher risk of 
suffering from health consequences.
    And so to all of our panelists, are there best practices 
that can prevent environmental injustices such as these, and 
are there immediate steps we can take to reduce the increased 
health risks associated with these plants? Anybody?
    Dr. Male. You should be able to readily address the 
particulate matter if you have any particulate matter coming 
off, and there are regulations on volatile organic compounds 
coming off from the production of, say, a roasting, like in 
torrefaction or in the production of pellets, that those 
volatile organic compounds should be combusted prior to going 
up a stack. And the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) has 
guidelines on both to help all communities.
    Ms. Ross. OK. Does anybody else have anything to add? I 
have a second question.
    Also, the selling or moving of bioenergy in existing 
pipelines, so I'm talking about what is referred to as 
renewable natural gas, requires negotiation with pipeline 
owners, and this requires coordination and careful attention to 
the movement of other gases in order to avoid dangers in 
combustion. And the North Carolina Utilities Commission is 
dealing with this right now and has several pilot programs for 
bioenergy moving through natural gas pipelines.
    Dr. Harmon, how do we ensure that the Pipeline and 
Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, PHMSA's regulation 
of these transactions balance the safety risks without being 
over-restrictive on something that can be a positive industry?
    Dr. Harmon. So, first, I have to acknowledge I have no 
expertise in natural gas pipelines or the complexity that you 
describe. What I would say is that if we think about renewable 
natural gas as something that can be used closer to its source 
in conversion facilities that make, for example, sustainable 
aviation fuel or make chemicals from that resource, in that way 
we would obviate the need for some of the complexity that you 
describe.
    Ms. Ross. Yes. Yes, that is a great point, and actually 
those projects are moving forward much more seamlessly. 
Interestingly in North Carolina our utilities get credit--get 
credits for using renewable natural gas, and so that's raised 
this issue with the pipelines. But hopefully, we can submit 
some other questions and get answers to those. Thank you so 
much, Mr. Chair, and I yield back.
    Mr. Casten. It appears that we have no more Republicans on 
the panel, so we will now turn to Dr. Foster from Illinois for 
5 minutes. To our distinguished panel, we've got you tied. 
We've got four doctors to your doctors. We'll see if you raise 
us on the next round. Dr. Foster, you're recognized.
    Mr. Foster. Well, I think that probably the thing that 
trumps this is the Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin that 
Dr. Hegg has, and so as a graduate of Wisconsin myself, I think 
that we can all acknowledge that that probably trumps 
everything.
    But one of the big knocks against biofuels in the early 
days had to do with the fact that it was unclear that things 
like corn ethanol were even carbon neutral. And there at the 
time were very large fossil fuel inputs to making, well, corn 
ethanol, for example. And so the two big things that have been 
talked about to eliminate those are the ability to eliminate 
ammonia fertilizer, and there are various biological approaches 
to that. I think Pivot Bio and some other companies are 
actually--and so I was wondering if you could sort of give a 
quick status report on that.
    The other thing that seemed promising is there's a company 
called ClearFlame I think that apparently has cracked the code 
on how to make diesel engines work with full thermodynamic 
efficiency and very low soot emissions using, for example, corn 
ethanol, methanol, or a variety of other. So apparently that, 
you know, required some bright new ideas from a startup that's 
just gotten a lot of follow-on funding. They're driving trucks 
around with corn ethanol at full thermodynamic efficiency.
    And so I was wondering what you think the promising ways 
are--you know, how far along are we, and what is the promising 
road ahead for further reducing the carbon footprint used to 
produce biofuels? Dr. Male, do you want to have a shot at that?
    Dr. Male. Yes. Thank you for bringing up that topic. There 
has been a lot of progress in introducing sustainable practices 
or best land management practices and utilization of lignin and 
other practice and going toward extracting corn oils and 
extracting fiber that have driven down--or, sorry, increased 
the greenhouse gas reductions. You've seen them march from a 20 
percent reduction initially for corn ethanol to when you have 
other processes on the site going to around 45 percent.
    You're right about there are different ways of utilizing 
organic fertilizer. There's a terrific opportunity that DOE and 
USDA are looking at, and there's a lot of science that is 
needed to look at the interaction of fertilizer, the soil 
bacteria communities, the root system of plants, and the 
interaction between those and the species and the transports 
and keeping it on the field. Farmers pay for their fertilizer. 
They do not want it leaving the field, and so there are 
opportunities where you can use energy crops or perennials with 
a deeper root system perhaps on the drainage from your field or 
the edge of your field so that you keep your fertilizer in the 
field while preventing your fertilizer from going into streams 
that can then go downstream and effect, well, organisms like 
microalgae to give you a harmful algal bloom.
    Mr. Foster. Yes. Dr. Leakey, did you have any comments on--
--
    Dr. Leakey. Yes, I could certainly contribute to that 
conversation. So within CABBI, reducing the greenhouse gas 
emissions in the form of nitrous oxide and maximizing the 
efficiency with which plants use nitrogen in the soil is of 
strong interest. As with a number of other aspects of this 
problem, I think it's best addressed with next-generation 
bioenergy feedstocks. And our team is working on that in a 
variety of ways.
    Actually having feedstocks which are perennial themselves 
is exceedingly valuable because they recycle the nutrients from 
1 year to the next. And similar to what Dr. Male just 
mentioned, our theme is also really actively working on 
understanding how microbial partners in the soil and in some 
cases the chemicals released from the roots of these crops 
influence that cycling of nitrogen and how we can manage them 
optimally to retain most of that nitrogen in the plant.
    And then last but not least we can actually engineer the 
plants themselves to try to use the nitrogen more efficiently. 
So there's a number of strands of research on the topic.
    Mr. Foster. Now, do you anticipate that within a small 
number of decades we'll be able to essentially eliminate the 
need for ammonia-based fertilizer? Is that a realistic hope?
    Dr. Leakey. I think we can realistically hope to 
substantially reduce its use. Whether we get to a total 
elimination or not is hard to say.
    Mr. Foster. All right. Thank you. My time is up and yield 
back.
    Mr. Casten. Thank you to all of our witnesses. Before I 
bring the hearing to a close, well, I'd like to thank all of 
our witnesses for testifying today. I have a statement for the 
record from the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, which I 
would move to be incorporated into the record. So ordered.
    The record will remain open for 2 weeks for additional 
statements from the Members and for any additional questions 
that the Committee may ask of the witnesses. The witnesses are 
excused, and the hearing is now adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 11:51 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

                               Appendix I

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                   Answers to Post-Hearing Questions




                   Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
                   Responses by Dr. Jonathan Male
                   
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                              Appendix II

                              ----------                              


                   Additional Material for the Record




             Letter submitted by Representative Sean Casten
             
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