Forest feedstock procurement for sustainable aviation fuel in the U.S. Northeast

A spatial biomass supply and cost framework was developed to evaluate forest residue feedstock potential for sustainable aviation fuel production in the U.S. Northeast. The model integrates Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data with a radius-based procurement approach to quantify how biomass accessibility changes with distance and how this translates into delivered cost (the total per-green-ton cost of supplying feedstock to a facility, combining harvesting, transportation, and stumpage components). Although forest biomass is abundant across the region, accessibility varies substantially by state. Massachusetts and Maine exceed 85 million dry tons within a 30-mile radius and surpass 220 million dry tons at 50 miles, whereas New York requires nearly the full 50-mile radius to achieve comparable supply, indicating lower apparent procurement efficiency for the selected site, partly because its procurement zone includes Lake Champlain and is clipped at the state boundary. When biomass is translated into recoverable residues, forest structure further constrains feedstock availability. Residue fractions remain near 0.29 in Massachusetts and Vermont but decline to approximately 0.23 in Maine, reflecting the larger share of Maine's standing biomass held in saplings (<5 inches DBH), which are excluded from the residue feedstock. Delivered residue cost ranged from approximately $28–43/GT at a 10-mile procurement radius and from $33–50/GT at 50 miles under baseline conditions. Sensitivity analysis showed that fuel price escalation produced moderate cost increases, whereas recovery fraction and harvesting cost attribution generated substantially larger economic effects. Under the combined stress scenario, delivered costs ranged from approximately $68–111/GT at a 50-mile procurement radius, demonstrating substantially greater cost exposure under unfavorable operating conditions. Forest-dynamics analysis revealed substantial regional and temporal variation in recruitment, mortality, and harvesting pressure, providing additional context for interpreting standing biomass as spatial resource potential rather than annual feedstock availability. The analysis provides a comparative framework for evaluating regional differences in forest residue potential and delivered cost for SAF feedstock procurement.