US sustainable aviation fuel production startup DG Fuels has selected Fischer-Tropsch (FT) technology co-developed by Johnson Matthey and energy giant bp for its proposed $4 billion SAF plant near the Mississippi River in Louisiana. Subject to approval being received this year, the St. James Parish facility could be in operation by 2028 and would be the largest announced FT SAF production operation in the world, says DG Fuels, with a planned capacity of 13,000 barrels per day, or around 120-135 million gallons of SAF annually. The FT CANS technology is feedstock agnostic although the facility will use plant waste, primarily sugar cane bagasse. Meanwhile, Southwest Airlines has acquired SAFFiRE Renewables, which is utilising technology developed at the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory to convert corn stover, a widely available agricultural residue feedstock in the US, into renewable ethanol. SAFFiRE is now expected to proceed with developing a pilot plant in Kansas to produce ethanol for conversion into SAF by LanzaJet.

Commenting on its collaboration with Johnson Matthey and bp, DG Fuels’ CEO Michael Darcy said: “Using their co-developed FT CANS technology allows DG Fuels to scale SAF at high volume production and competitive prices for the first time ever. This innovation will take our SAF from the sugar cane fields of Louisiana to cleaner skies all across the world.”

DG Fuels has already secured offtake purchase deals with Delta Air Lines and Air France-KLM, and has a strategic partnership with Airbus to scale up the use of SAF globally. Last November, Air France announced it was investing $4.7 million in the company and the Air France-KLM group acquired an option to purchase up to 25 million gallons (75,000 tons) of SAF annually over a multi-year period beginning in 2029 from the Louisiana plant and a second facility planned in Maine. This is on top of a 2022 offtake agreement by the group for 600,000 tons of SAF from DG Fuels, to be delivered over ten years.

For its first project, the company has earmarked a 3,000-acre (1,200ha) site on the West Bank of St. James Parish for potential development of the near $4bn facility. It says the project is anticipated to create 650 direct permanent jobs, with preference given to local residents and promises to address local needs while protecting the environment and promoting economic prosperity in the area.

To help secure local support for the project, DG Fuels says it has engaged with community members and local government officials to draft a legally binding Community Benefits Agreement that would provide $26 million in funding towards a community centre, a health clinic, paid internships and other benefits. The CBA received support from the St. James Parish Council in February.

The company expects to purchase $120 million of sugar cane waste from local farmers, with nearly one third of this directly benefiting farmers in St. James Parish. This provides an environmentally-friendly and financially attractive alternative to practices where farmers burn the sugar cane trash after harvesting, it adds.

“Our clean facility will have fewer air emissions than a standard US hospital, will have no impact on the Mississippi River and will help to heal our planet,” says the company. “Our fuel made from sugar cane and plant waste is clean, sustainable and created with renewable energy.”

The FT CANS technology converts synthesis gas created in the DG Fuels’ proprietary production process to synthetic crude for further processing into SAF. FT CANS is being used by Fulcrum BioEnergy to convert municipal solid waste into SAF at its Sierra plant.

“Our FT CANS technology solution brings together decades of science and engineering expertise from bp and Johnson Matthey, and this project shows its competitiveness across a range of production scales and feedstock sources the industry needs,” said Noemie Turner, VP Technology Development & Commercialisation at bp. “We’re excited to see the relationship with DG Fuels grow, and we look forward to seeing this project come to fruition.”

Added Christopher Chaput, President of DG Fuels: “With this technology, we will create a product that is responsibly made and can be immediately substituted for conventional aviation fuel with no engine adaptations. This partnership is a significant boost to help the aviation industry reach its climate goals.”

SAFFiRE acquisition

Southwest Airlines first invested in SAFFiRE Renewables during the first phase of the ethanol producer’s pilot project in 2022 and through its newly-launched Southwest Airlines Renewable Ventures (SARV) subsidiary, the airline has now moved to acquire the company. As a result, SAFFiRE is expected to proceed with phase two by developing a pilot plant hosted at Conestoga’s Arkalon Energy ethanol facility in Liberal, Kansas.

“This acquisition marks Southwest’s transition from investor to sole owner of SAFFiRE, expressing our confidence in their technology and its potential to advance our sustainability goals, as well as the goals of the broader industry,” commented the airline’s CEO, Bob Jordan.

SAFFiRE is part of a project supported by the Department of Energy (DOE) to develop and produce scalable renewable ethanol. The Kansas plant will utilise SAFFiRE’s exclusive technology licence from NREL to process 10 tons of corn stover per day into ethanol, with a plan for the ethanol to be converted into SAF by LanzaJet’s alcohol-to-jet (ATJ) technology, which partly owes its development to the DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Lab. LanzaJet was added to the SARV portfolio in February when the airline announced a $30 million investment in the ATJ company.

Another agricultural residue, corn stover is the stalks, leaves and husks of corn plants that is largely left to decompose in the fields after the corn harvest each year. SAFFiRE plans for corn stover to be collected by custom harvesters or by local farmers and processed through a proprietary Deacetylation and Mechanical Refining (DMR) technology developed by NREL, called DMR pretreatment.

“Renewable ethanol is an important feedstock to realising high-volume, affordable SAF, which is a critical part of the journey to net zero emissions,” said Tom Nealon, President of SARV and CEO of SAFFiRE. “We are enthusiastic about the ethanol-to-SAF pathway and SAFFiRE’s potential ability to produce renewable ethanol at a scale that is economically viable.”

Image: Render of the proposed DG Fuels SAF facility on the banks of the Mississippi River in Louisiana

Christopher Surgenor

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Southwest Airlines has agreed to purchase over 400,000 carbon credits from SMBC Aviation Capital, the world’s second largest aircraft leasing company, to support the airline’s employee business and charitable travel, or to meet CORSIA requirements. As the first aircraft lessor to develop a carbon credit programme, SMBC Aviation Capital announced in September 2022 an initial investment of $53.3 million in projects that align with up to 10 of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including good health and well-being, gender equality and climate action. Part of the investment will also support local community initiatives such as irrigation schemes and micro finance opportunities for women. Carbon credits can be obtained from the Ireland-based lessor by airlines either as part of an aircraft lease contract or independently. It has placed 12 Boeing 737-8 MAX aircraft with Southwest and is also collaborating with partners on scaling up sustainable aviation fuel production.

“Southwest continues to make sustainability a priority and we are delighted to partner with them as the first customer of our newly-established carbon credit programme,” commented David Swan, Chief Operations & Sustainability Officer at SMBC Aviation Capital. “This announcement supports our objective of working with our airline customers to accelerate their path to environmental sustainability. We believe that by taking tangible actions and working together we can make a positive change, especially in a hard-to-abate sector like aviation.”

Through Belgium-based CO2 Logic, SMBC Aviation Capital has invested in a project in Burkina Faso, West Africa, that will provide energy-efficient cookstoves to 28,000 families who have previously relied on traditional cooking methods that are harmful to health and the environment. According to the Clean Cooking Alliance, the use of open fires and solid fuels for cooking causes nearly 4 million premature deaths each year and, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the average open fire produces nearly as much CO2 as the average motor vehicle.

Separately, the lessor is working with US carbon project developer C-Quest Capital to forward purchase carbon credits from a range of cookstove projects across Africa, Asia and Central America, which aim to reach over 3.2 million households and meet a minimum of seven SDGs.

Due diligence across all projects has been independently undertaken by Climate Focus, which is based in the Netherlands.

Under the agreement with Southwest, the airline will be acquiring over a five-year timeframe carbon credits certified by either Gold Standard or Verra from SMBC Aviation Capital’s funded projects in Africa and Central America.

“We recognise the important roles that both in-sector and out-of-sector levers play in our sustainability journey,” said Chris Monroe, SVP Finance Treasury & Sustainability, Southwest Airlines. “Expanding our existing partnership with SMBC Aviation Capital supports these projects that are expected to help mitigate carbon while contributing positively to local communities.”

In October 2021, Southwest laid out a 10-year plan to maintain carbon neutrality to 2019 levels, which included the first US-based carbon offset initiative that offered customers loyalty points, and for every dollar contributed towards offsetting Southwest’s carbon emissions, the airline would match the contribution.

The plan also incorporated a target to reduce carbon emissions per available seat mile (including scope 1 and scope 2 emissions) by at least 20% by 2030 through fleet modernisation, route optimisation and other initiatives. The airline also plans to replace 10% of its total jet fuel consumption with sustainable aviation fuel by 2030.

Towards the end of 2021, Southwest signed a 15-year offtake agreement with Velocys Renewables for 219 million gallons of SAF, with deliveries commencing as early as 2026 from the Velocys Bayou Fuels facility in Natchez, Mississippi. The airline estimates the fuel could avoid 6.5 million tonnes of CO2 over the term of the agreement.

In June last year, Southwest announced an investment in SAFFiRE Renewables, a company formed by D3MAX, which in 2021 was awarded a grant by the US Department of Energy towards a pilot-scale facility. The grant is being matched by Southwest and the SAFFiRE project is expected to utilise technology developed by the DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory to convert corn stover, a widely available waste feedstock in the US, into renewable ethanol that then would be upgraded into SAF. The investment and grant supports phase one of the project, which is expected to include technology validation, preliminary design and a business plan for a pilot plant.

“This is a unique opportunity to invest in what we believe could be game-changing technology that could facilitate the replacement of up to approximately 5% of our jet fuel with SAF by2030, with the potential to significantly continue to scale beyond the decade,” commented Southwest CEO Bob Jordan at the time of the announcement. “This first-of-its-kind investment is another step we are taking to address our environmental impact and it also supports our efforts to partner with organisations and government entities to help our industry reach the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.”

SMBC Aviation Capital has an owned, managed and committed fleet of over 900 aircraft and is working to a target of up to 80% of new technology aircraft in its fleet by the end of 2025. It is working with shareholder Sumitomo Corporation to explore ways to increase the supply of SAF and is also collaborating with Aircraft Leasing Ireland on starting production of SAF in Ireland. It has developed its own framework to achieve net zero in its own operations by 2050 and has offset all of its operational emissions since 2019. Scope 3 emissions are determined by Fexco Group company PACE.

Image (Boeing): Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 MAX

Christopher Surgenor

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