National Bioenergy Day Is Here! Celebrate with a Look at the Current State of Bioenergy Research.

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Bioenergy Technologies Office

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October 20, 2021

National Bioenergy Day Is Here! Celebrate with a Look at the Current State of Bioenergy Research.

Bioenergy Researchers Collage

Today is National Bioenergy Day! Celebrate by looking at the current and recent bioenergy research happening across the nation. Photos courtesy of National Renewable Energy Laboratory.


The world of bioenergy is evolving at a rapid pace! For National Bioenergy Day, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) wants to share some of the top bioenergy, bioproducts, and biofuels research happening with BETO’s national lab partners. Many of the projects exploring bioeconomy solutions are multi-lab partnerships and capitalize on the expertise of many of the top experts in bioenergy research, development, and demonstration across the country. Read more about the labs and their corresponding projects at the links below.

  • Argonne National Laboratory: Scientists performed a life cycle analysis of corn to ethanol and then to jet fuel, revealing ethanol plants and corn farming to be two major sources of corn ethanol greenhouse gas emissions.
  • Idaho National Laboratory: A research team has identified models that could help expand biomass processing to industry scale at an economically low cost.
  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: Two new publicly available web-based software tools aim to help researchers and companies quickly test different scenarios and explore viable bio-based fuels and products without ever stepping foot in the lab. 
  • Los Alamos National Laboratory: Scientists are working on producing bio-derived chemicals to help renewable jet fuel meet or exceed current specifications while also offering a performance advantage.
  • National Renewable Energy Laboratory: Scientists have unveiled a new analytical method to help companies in the process of accessing federal renewable fuel standard incentives with a series of basic steps commercial scientists can take to verify the amount of cellulose in grain samples.
  • Oak Ridge National Laboratory: A multi-laboratory team of scientists is studying the feasibility of using energy-dense biofuels such as biocrude and bio-oil to meet new emissions regulations for cargo ships.
  • Pacific Northwest National Laboratory: Researchers conducted a techno-economic analysis to investigate how cost-effective a newer wastewater resource recovery could be for treating wastewater solids by converting them to biofuels when compared to a traditional process.
  • Sandia National Laboratories: A new Co-Optimization of Fuels and report identifies the top 13 blendstocks created from waste or biomass for use in diesel fuel. These blendstocks could reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well as lower the total cost of ownership of diesel vehicles.

BETO supports research, development, and demonstration to enable the sustainable use of domestic biomass and waste resources for the production of biofuels and bioproducts.