Title: Distributed Wind Market Applications

Industry sector: Wind

Executive Summary:

In his 2007 State of the Union address, President Bush challenged the nation to support a goal of
reducing gasoline consumption by 20 percent in the next 10 years (“20 in 10”) to “reduce our
addiction to oil.” This challenge arises from our continued and growing dependence on imported
oil, which exposes the country to critical disruptions in fuel supply, creates economic and social
uncertainties for businesses and individuals, and impacts our national security.
Program Goals
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recognizes the importance of a diverse energy portfolio
in meeting the nation’s energy security challenges. DOE has, therefore, set a goal in its Strategic
Plan to promote energy security through a diverse energy supply that is reliable, clean, and
affordable. As a key strategy for attaining both Presidential and Department goals, the DOE
Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s (EERE’s) Biomass Program is focused on
developing biofuel, bioproduct and biopower technologies in partnership with other government
agencies, industry and academia.
The Biomass Program supports four key priorities of the EERE Strategic Plan:
• Dramatically reduce dependence on foreign oil
• Promote the use of diverse, domestic and sustainable energy resources
• Reduce carbon emissions from energy production and consumption
• Establish a domestic bioindustry
Biomass is the single renewable resource that has the potential to supplant our use of liquid
transportation fuels now and help create a more stable energy future. Using our indigenous
biomass resources, we can potentially fuel our cars and provide new economic opportunities
across the nation.
National efforts to meet the President’s goals include the entire biomass-to-biofuels supply
chain—from the farmer’s field to the consumer’s vehicle (see Figure A). This Multi-Year RD&D
Plan (MYP) details the strategic and performance goals, targets, activities and milestones across
the supply chain designed to help achieve the President’s 20 in 10 goal and support EERE’s
national priorities for energy.

The MYPP also establishes the framework that will help the nation to
achieve sustainable energy security. The Biomass Program vision, mission and strategic goals
are in direct alignment with the DOE Strategic Plan and EERE’s strategic goals. The overall
performance goals set for the Program reflect the current strategy of focusing on cellulosic
ethanol as the most immediate path to meeting the President’s goals and address both the
technology advances required to enable production of cost-competitive cellulosic ethanol and the
increase in biofuels production volume needed to meet the petroleum fuel displacement goals.
The Program will continue to update its strategy and evaluate the contribution of other biofuels,
products and power toward the petroleum displacement goals for future plans. The Program
vision, mission and goals are shown below in Figure B.

Program Strategy

Meeting the President’s goal will require the concerted efforts of federal and state policy and
decision-makers, the industrial and agricultural communities, and finance and business entrepeneurs. Coordination of multidisciplinary scientific and engineering expertise of academia
and the national laboratories will be critical to building a strong technology foundation. The
Biomass Program is accordingly forging new partnerships and strategic alliances to leverage
efforts in meeting the technological and economic challenges of establishing integrated
biorefineries.

The Biomass Program’s work break down structure is organized into three broad categories: core
research and development of biomass feedstocks and conversion technologies; industrial-scale
demonstration and validation of integrated biorefineries; and crosscutting market transformation
activities to accelerate market deployment of cellulosic technologies. Since the wide diversity of
biomass feedstocks, conversion technologies, integration options, and potential products together
create a multitude of scenarios possible for biorefinery options, the Biomass Program has
developed a framework of seven plausible biorefinery pathways that integrate the first three
elements of the biomass-to-biofuels supply chain (feedstock production, feedstock logistics and
conversion) for specific feedstock classes. This approach streamlines the evaluation of
opportunities, establishment of RD&D priorities, and measurement of progress toward
commercialization.