The Regional Biomass Resource Hub Initiative (RBRH) is a new initiative from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) designed to accelerate the sustainable mobilization of purpose-grown energy crops to create clean fuels and products. The RBRH’s mission is to identify and validate market-driven regional strategies that help mobilize low carbon-intensity, purpose-grown energy crops across varied agronomic landscapes. RBRH does this by generating modeling tools, data, and guidelines that support feedstock supply chain development.
Funded by DOE’s Bioenergy Technologies Office, RBRH is led by researchers at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) with expertise in feedstock production, integrated landscape management, carbon intensity measurement and supply chain logistics. INL will coordinate collaboration amongst RBRH groups to share experimental plans, report data, and collectively achieve the funding objectives. RBRH group members will be grouped (by Subtopic Area and by logical geographic regions) to coordinate feedstock data standards and procedures, and to collectively overcome regional resource mobilization challenges and barriers. The RBRH groups will also work alongside a wide range of stakeholders, including national laboratories, universities, regional landowners and farmers, policy makers, among others, to ensure the RBRH is meeting the needs of the industry and communities they serve.
The RBRH will be supported by the Biomass Feedstock National User Facility (BFNUF), a DOE-funded facility. BFNUF, the lead national biomass preprocessing research and development institution, provides value-added technology and capabilities in supply and logistics, analysis and sustainability, preprocessing, and characterization.
Learn more about this new DOE initiative.