French global airport operator Groupe ADP has invested $20 million in US-based LanzaJet, an emerging international producer of sustainable aviation fuel. The investment was made by ADP International, a subsidiary of the group, as part of a strategy to transform its airports into energy hubs able to provide electricity, SAF and low-carbon hydrogen. The investment follows LanzaJet’s recent activation of the Freedom Pines facility in Soperton, Georgia, the world’s first ethanol-to-fuel plant, capable of both SAF and renewable diesel production. Groupe ADP is the third company to invest in LanzaJet this year, after the Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund and the world’s biggest low-cost airline, Texas-based Southwest. LanzaJet has global expansion ambitions, with plans to develop plants elsewhere in America, as well as in Europe and Asia. It is also a partner in a new SAF project planned for Queensland, Australia.

The latest investment by Groupe ADP  is part of a plan to supply SAF at competitive prices in France and globally, and specifically to help strengthen LanzaJet’s production and deployment capabilities.  

In addition to the three major airports in Paris – Charles de Gaulle, Orly and Le Bourget – Groupe ADP has management contracts or concessions at 23 more airports, including through investments in Turkey’s TAV Airports and Indian operator GMR Airports. Among the hubs it manages are those in three capitals: Zagreb, Amman and Santiago.

“Low-carbon aviation will not take off without the transformation of airports into energy hubs with a range of low-carbon solutions,” explained Augustin de Romanet, CEO of Groupe ADP. “The airport revolution must happen now, and it is underway in Paris.

“As the world’s leading airport operator, we want to go further and act at source by supporting the production of sustainable aviation fuel, investing directly in LanzaJet, an innovative company able to deploy its technology responsibly around the world, and adapting to local waste to make these new fuels available everywhere.”

Groupe ADP was also the first airport company to invest in the United Airlines Ventures Sustainable Flight Fund, an investment fund established by the world’s third-biggest airline to support the development of SAF. 

LanzaJet is aiming to produce 1 billion gallons of SAF (3.8 billion litres) per year by 2030 and, from the second half of this year, 10 million gallons (38 million litres) per year at its first US facility, Freedom Pines, which uses alcohol produced from feedstocks including municipal waste and forestry and agricultural residues.

“We continue to lay the foundation for building the SAF industry across the entire value chain,” said LanzaJet CEO Jimmy Samartzis. “With this significant contribution from Groupe ADP, a first-of-its-kind in the industry, we will expand LanzaJet’s technology deployment and global growth.

“Together, we will work towards expanding sustainable aviation fuel production and logistics into airports to support airlines and Groupe ADP customers worldwide as the industry works collaboratively to decarbonise.” 

The Groupe ADP investment closely follows another from Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund, which also supports LanzaJet’s SAF development and deployment. The two companies will additionally explore how Microsoft’s data and artificial intelligence technology can support LanzaJet’s corporate functions and ethanol-to-SAF process technology.

Details of the latest investment were not disclosed, but in 2022 Microsoft provided a $50 million project finance investment to support construction of the Freedom Pines facility.

“Our continued alignment with Microsoft allows LanzaJet to build our team and capacity at pace to support global deployment of our leading sustainable fuels process technology,” said Samartzis. “Microsoft has played a significant role in making SAF production a reality in the United States, and this investment re-emphasises its urgent commitment to decarbonisation of hard-to-abate sectors.”

Through its investment in LanzaJet, Microsoft can also gain access to SAF and renewable diesel, and SAF certificates (SAFc) from future LanzaJet projects to progress its own 2030 carbon neutrality targets.

“Microsoft is proud to support LanzaJet with our investment in the growth of its sustainable fuel technology business,” said Brandon Middaugh, senior director of Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund. “Microsoft is investing in partners who share our commitment to advancing a net-zero economy and who are building the market for critical solutions like SAF and renewable diesel.”

Also this year, LanzaJet has received a $30 million investment from Southwest Airlines, as part of a broader deal in which the two will collaborate on developing a SAF production facility in the US. That project will progress the operations of another energy company in which Southwest is invested, SAFFiRE Renewables, which specialises in converting corn stover to ethanol.

Other investors and funders in LanzaJet include All Nippon Airways, Breakthrough Energy, British Airways, Lanzatech, Mitsui & Co, Shell and Suncor Energy.

Photo: The LanzaJet Freedom Pines plant

Tony Harrington

Correspondent

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Global technology company Microsoft will compensate carbon emissions from its corporate air travel and supply chain air cargo for the next 10 years through a landmark new book-and-claim partnership with US-based renewable fuels producer World Energy. Under the agreement, claimed by both companies to be the largest and longest of its type, Microsoft will buy sustainable aviation fuel certificates (SAFc) and World Energy will produce the requisite volumes of fuel. The SAF associated with the certificates will be transferred by World Energy from its plant in southern California to the nearest major airport, Los Angeles International, for use by airlines there. California has just passed corporate emissions reporting requirements, and similar regulations are expected soon from the US SEC and the EU, that include indirect (Scope 3) emissions like business travel and shipping.

Microsoft and World Energy estimate that 43.7 million gallons (165 litres) of petroleum jet fuel will be displaced by low-carbon SAF during the life of their book-and-claim partnership, and say the initiative will cut flight emissions by more than 469,000 tonnes of CO2.

“That is the equivalent of flying 824,053 economy class passengers from Seattle to New York and back on fully decarbonised flights,” explained the companies, “or decarbonising the transportation of over 54,000 tonnes of cargo between Asia and North America.”

Book-and-claim programmes are becoming increasingly popular, not only as tools to help corporations offset their travel emissions, but also as a means of increasing demand for and production of SAF, which is in short supply.

“The role of SAF certificates in decarbonising aviation is poised to grow exponentially and Microsoft’s commitment will help accelerate that growth,” said World Energy.

All parties benefit, with corporate customers able to progress their sustainability goals through the purchase of independently-authenticated SAF credits, fuel producers able to viably increase their SAF outputs as demand increases and airlines eventually able to access more and cheaper SAF as higher production begins to bring down prices.

As well, because the fuel covered by SAF certificates does not need to be physically transferred to certificate buyers, in this case Microsoft, it can be transferred to airports near where it is produced, minimising the logistics costs and emissions of transportation, while boosting SAF stocks.

World Energy was the first company in the world to produce SAF in commercial volumes, delivering initial supplies from its Paramount, California facility in 2016. Now one of three companies producing high volumes of SAF, it plans to increase its Californian production to 250 million gallons per year by 2024 and to add another 250 million gallons per year from 2025, when it activates a second plant in Houston. By 2030, it is targeting 1 million gallons per year.

“We’re thrilled to be launching this long-term collaboration with Microsoft,” commented World Energy CEO Gene Gebolys. “Through this agreement, we will empower one of the world’s most recognised innovators to grow their business while minimising their carbon impact.

“Together we’re committing to making a sustained push well into the next decade to decarbonise aviation at ever-greater scale. Microsoft has made some of the most ambitious decarbonisation commitments of any corporate leader and we are honoured to be teaming up to help them meet those goals.”

Katie Ross, Microsoft’s Director, Carbon Reduction Strategy & Market Development, said the partnership with World Energy “exemplifies the power of collaboration and technology in driving meaningful change in one of the hardest-to-abate sectors.

“Not only will it help to reduce our business travel and supply chain logistics emissions, but we hope this agreement will inspire others to take action and support the transition to alternative fuels that will enable a decarbonised aviation industry.”

The first SAF to be delivered under the new deal is expected to reach Los Angeles International Airport later this year.

Photo: World Energy’s Paramount facility

Editor’s note: Speakers from World Energy and Microsoft will be discussing their new agreement at the forthcoming Aviation Carbon 2023 conference in London on November 6/7, 2023.

Tony Harrington

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Alaska Airlines is partnering with Microsoft Corporation and carbon technology company Twelve to progress the development of power-to-liquid (PtL) fuels, through which carbon dioxide captured from the atmosphere is converted with renewable energy to create sustainable aviation fuel. The three companies have signed a Memorandum of Understanding that will lead to the first commercial demonstration flight in the US using Twelve’s E-Jet low carbon fuel, followed by Alaska’s use of the fuel to part-power some of Microsoft’s business travel on the airline to help recompense its emissions. Alaska Airlines has committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2040, 10 years ahead of the airline industry’s generally-agreed commitment to 2050, and has purchased and promoted SAF for more than a decade, while Microsoft is also an investor in Twelve through the Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund, reports Tony Harrington. Meanwhile, two European airlines, Aer Lingus and Aegean, have announced SAF deals.

Diana Birkett Rakow, SVP Public Affairs and Sustainability for Alaska Airlines, said the carrier’s commitment to achieving net zero emissions by 2040 relied upon procuring SAF, including Twelve’s E-Jet product. “We are committed to making SAF more widely available, at an affordable price, helping bring new alternatives to market, and using these fuels in our operation, a path that requires public policy action and private partnerships like this one,” she said. “We’re excited to work with Twelve and Microsoft to advance Twelve’s E-Jet fuel, turning captured CO2 and renewable energy into fuel for our airplanes.”

The airline said that since 2010, it had worked with a range of public and private partners “to advance public policies needed to jumpstart the nascent SAF market, create new offtake agreements and cultivate partnerships to accelerate market development,” and was a founding member of the Aviators Group of the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Buyers Alliance (SABA), which was announced at last year’s COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. Alaska Airlines has also participated in Boeing’s ecoDemonstrator programme to test 100% SAF in one engine of a Boeing 737 jet, partnered with SAF provider SkyNRG to progress development of fuel from recycled municipal waste and is a participant in two US-based SAF procurement deals by the oneworld alliance, of which it is a member. Beyond SAF, it has partnered with ZeroAvia to help develop a hybrid-electric powertrain for regional airliners.

Twelve’s E-Jet fuel is created through the use of an electrochemical reactor and a proprietary catalyst, which replicate the natural process of photosynthesis at industrial scale by electrifying CO2 and water to produce carbon neutral fuel. “By producing our drop-in E-Jet fuel from captured CO2 we can rapidly and efficiently close the carbon cycle and allow businesses to sustainably use emissions to power their own business travel,” said Nicholas Flanders, CEO and Co-founder of Twelve. “Partnering with progress-minded brands like Alaska Airlines and Microsoft adds thrust as we work towards delivering industrial-scale volumes of E-Jet.” The company said the fuel had already been tested and qualified by the US Air Force.

In March this year, the Canadian e-commerce group Shopify, which is also one of the largest corporate investors in long-term carbon removal, announced its Sustainability Fund had made the first purchase of Twelve’s E-Jet fuel. “Purchasing carbon removal from leading companies is critical to helping them scale, but purchasing from emerging companies pursuing novel approaches is equally essential,” said Stacy Kauk, Shopify’s Head of Sustainability. As well as helping to accelerate carbon removal solutions, she added, such investments also provided recipient businesses with a strong revenue stream and helped them to secure financing for their programmes.   

Elizabeth Willmott, Carbon Programme Director at Microsoft, said addressing emissions from hard-to-abate sectors such as aviation needed commitment from all stakeholders. “Building on our Climate Innovation Fund investment in Twelve and relationship with Alaska Airlines, this collaboration provides an opportunity to accelerate decarbonisation in the aviation industry by exploring how to use low carbon fuels produced by renewable electricity, like Twelve’s E-Jet.”

While Alaska Airlines expands its extensive SAF programme to include PtL, two European airlines, Aer Lingus and Aegean, have both announced new agreements to purchase SAF in line with their commitments to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

Aer Lingus, a member of International Airlines Group (IAG), has just signed an agreement to purchase 19,000 tonnes per year of SAF for five years from US-based renewable fuels company Gevo, commencing in 2026. The fuel will be used by the airline to help power its flights from Los Angeles and San Francisco, and from 2026 will represent 50% of the fuel purchased by Aer Lingus in California.

IAG, which also includes British Airways, Iberia, Iberia Express, Vueling, Air Nostrum and LEVEL, has already committed to a target of net zero emissions by 2050, and to powering 10% of its flights with SAF by 2030. Aer Lingus said its deal with Gevo would provide enough SAF to cut lifecycle CO2 emissions by at least 180,000 tonnes, equivalent to 1,000 net zero CO2 flights with widebody Airbus A330 jets between Dublin and Los Angeles.

In Greece, Aegean has announced its first SAF deal, a partnership with Hellenic Petroleum to use a blended product to operate flights on domestic and international routes, beginning with departures from its hub at Thessaloniki Airport, to be followed soon after by services from Athens International Airport. Timing of the programmes was not revealed.

Photo: Alaska Airlines

Shell, Accenture and American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT) have joined forces to launch Avelia, a blockchain-powered digital sustainable aviation fuel book-and-claim platform for business travel. Offering around 1 million gallons of SAF, enough, they say, to power nearly 15,000 individual business traveller flights from London to New York, the partners claim Avelia is the largest book-and-claim pilot at launch. It has been developed by Shell and Accenture, with technical support from the Energy Web Foundation, and includes Amex GBT’s travel management services to aggregate global business demand for SAF, with the aim of stimulating SAF supply and helping the aviation industry’s pathway towards net zero emissions. Book-and-claim enables airlines and their business customers to simultaneously reduce emissions in their respective scopes. It allows travellers to pay for SAF and claim the benefits even if SAF is not available at their departure airport, and is instead fed into another aircraft at an airport where it is available. The partners say Avelia will ensure transparency and accountability by avoiding issues such as double-counting.

“SAF is a key enabler of decarbonisation in the aviation industry, and it’s available today. However, it’s currently scarce and costs more than conventional jet fuel,” said Jan Toschka, President, Shell Aviation. “Avelia will help trigger demand for SAF at scale, providing confidence to suppliers like us to further increase investment in production, and in turn helping to lower the price point for these fuels.”

The three launch partners are the platform’s first customers and welcomed other corporations to join it and their efforts “to drive industry change”. Shell has committed to purchasing the environmental attributes equivalent to 100,000 gallons of SAF over the pilot phase of the Avelia programme. It says the commitment will be increased “as soon as more SAF is available” in order to achieve its ambition to abate 45% of Shell’s corporate travel emissions through SAF by 2030.

Rachel Barton, Europe Strategy Lead at Accenture, said the vision for the Avelia platform was to bring airlines, corporates, cargo players and SAF suppliers together “in a trusted ecosystem that no individual company could build or access on its own.” She added: “Blockchain technology will be piloted to help ensure trust via data integrity, validate proof of ownership and enable transparent tracking of the environmental benefits of SAF for customers.”

Scalable co-investment models that allow companies to co-fund the cost of SAF are crucial to significantly scale SAF supply and use, say the partners. Once approved by industry bodies as an acceptable form of emissions reduction, say the partners, Avelia could enable airlines and companies who choose SAF to authenticate, record and report the associated emissions reduction benefits of SAF towards their voluntary ESG reporting.

“An industry-accepted carbon accounting mechanism, like book-and-claim, is key for such programmes to credibly grow,” they believe. “Avelia’s data security and credibility are key to reaching scientific and market consensus for ways to allocate SAF’s environmental attributes and help accelerate the decarbonisation of aviation.”

Paul Abbott, CEO of Amex GBT, said: “A truly viable route to decarbonising air travel is now open for business. We’re calling on all companies to join us and share the costs and benefits of SAF across the travel and aviation sectors. Airlines will gain access to the buying capacity of businesses, drawing from Amex GBT’s 19,000 customers around the world.”

The development of the Avelia book-and-claim platform was welcomed by Lauren Uppink Calderwood, Head of Aviation, Travel and Tourism at the World Economic Forum. “We look forward to integrating learnings from these efforts into our broader SAFc Framework programme. Sharing the price premium of SAF offers exciting potential to address the aviation industry’s supply-and-demand impasse over scaling SAF.”

Elena Schmidt, Executive Director of the standards body Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB), said book-and-claim had the potential to significantly increase market access to SAF. “It allows airlines and their customers to invest in SAF and purchase its environmental claims without needing to be tied to a production site,” she said. “As long as the value chain is based on a robust system, such as the one developed by RSB in collaboration with our multi-stakeholder community, the net environmental effect of SAF will be ensured. RSB supports innovative and collaborative partnerships that build a more sustainable environment and bio-based circular economy, and so applauds this new programme.

“We are delighted to welcome long-time RSB member Shell, along with Amex GBT and partners in the RSB book-and-claim development.”

Avelia uses a blockchain-powered book-and-claim method that follows the Smart Freight Centre and MIT’s Center for Transportation & Logistics SAF GHG accounting and insetting guidelines. It runs on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.

“Decarbonising hard to abate sectors like aviation will be essential to reaching a net zero future, and technology has a critical role to play in this transformation,” commented Elisabeth Brinton, Corporate VP Sustainability for Microsoft. “We’re proud to support Shell in this effort to expand the market for SAF.”

Photo: Shell

LanzaJet has secured a $50 million investment from the Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund to support the construction of its first alcohol-to-jet (ATJ) sustainable aviation fuel production plant in Georgia, United States. The company says work on the Freedom Pines Fuels biorefinery is progressing as planned, despite supply chain, manufacturing and labour shortage challenges, with fabrication well underway, some modules completed and final site engineering nearing completion. The plant is expected to achieve mechanical completion this year and begin producing 10 million gallons of SAF and renewable diesel per year from sustainable ethanol, including from waste-based feedstocks, in 2023. Following a national production target announced at a White House meeting last September of 3 billion gallons a year by 2030, LanzaJet is aiming to contribute a third of the total, as well as build a global market for its fuels. Financial support from Microsoft’s $1 billion fund adds to other investments from LanzaTech, Suncor Energy, Mitsui & Co, Shell, British Airways and All Nippon Airways, with further funding coming from the US Department of Energy Bioenergy Technologies Office.

Private sector investment and government support are crucial to enabling the scale-up of new technologies to curb carbon emissions, said LanzaJet, whose ATJ technology has been in development for more than a decade through a partnership initially between LanzaTech and the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Lab. PNNL developed a catalytic process to upgrade ethanol to ATJ synthetic paraffinic kerosene (ATJ-SPK), which LanzaTech took from the laboratory to pilot scale. Launched in June 2020, spin-off LanzaJet is now commercially deploying the technology globally and last August it announced it would be deploying its technology across three projects in the UK.

“We know that creating the change which our world desperately needs requires perseverance, innovation and like-minded partnerships. We are thrilled to bring on Microsoft and its Climate Innovation Fund to help us build our first-of-its-kind sustainable fuels plant in Georgia,” said Jimmy Samartzis, LanzaJet CEO. “The partnership with Microsoft is more than just financing – it advances our work towards net zero fuels, it enables lower-cost sustainable fuels into the market and it supports the urgency to have real, proven technologies scale-up and deploy.

“We set a bold ambition to support the White House with a goal of 1 billion gallons of sustainable fuels by 2030. With Microsoft’s support, this first plant significantly expands the production of sustainable fuels in the US, establishes Georgia as a leader in clean tech and is the foundation for us as the first alcohol-to-jet sustainable fuels producer, as well as a blueprint for the commercial plants we’re developing globally.”

The investment was made as part of Microsoft’s efforts to achieve its 2030 goal of becoming carbon negative and advancing a net zero economy. It will also allow Microsoft to access renewable diesel for its data centres. By 2050, Microsoft has pledged to remove all the carbon it has emitted either directly or by electrical consumption since it was founded in 1975. As part of its 2030 carbon negative goal, Microsoft is deploying $1 billion of its capital in the Climate Innovation Fund, launched in 2020, to help accelerate the development of carbon reduction and removal technologies through equity and debt capital.

“With this investment, we support LanzaJet in creating new pathways to help companies across industries achieve net zero carbon through the use of sustainable fuels,” said the fund’s Director, Brandon Middaugh. “Decarbonising hard-to-abate industries and technologies will be essential to achieving our carbon reduction goals by 2030. We look forward to working with LanzaJet to accelerate the global development and deployment of high-quality, sustainable fuels technologies.”

Microsoft is a founding member of the Sustainable Aviation Buyers Alliance (SABA), a group of major US corporates that have come together to drive SAF market demand and investment, with a mission to accelerate the path to net zero aviation. Microsoft recently took part in a SAF ‘book and claim’ pilot with SABA, United Airlines and standards body RSB. The IT giant has also entered into an agreement with Alaska Airlines whereby the carbon emissions from employee’s business travel between Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and three US West Coast destinations are covered by purchases of SAF credits.

Photo (Boeing): All Nippon Airways is an investor in LanzaJet

RSB and Air bp announced their partnership in a sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) book and claim pilot earlier this year and, as part of the pilot, were joined by Microsoft, United Airlines and the Sustainable Aviation Buyers Alliance (SABA) to record the first transaction in the RSB book and claim register. With an approximate 80% reduction in lifecycle emissions in comparison with fossil jet fuel, 7,000 gallons (21 tonnes) of waste-based SAF were supplied by Air bp to United Airlines at UK airports. The sustainability attributes of the fuel were purchased by and credited to Microsoft, a founding company of SABA, which is managed by RMI and the Environmental Defense Fund, reports Susan van Dyk. The transaction was audited and verified by RSB, and the SAF credits were recorded in a book and claim register and retired by Microsoft after the fuel was used. Experience from the pilot scheme, together with broad stakeholder consultations, are contributing to the development of a book and claim manual by RSB, which will establish the rules for a robust, credible and transparent system that verifies the emission reductions achieved while avoiding double counting. Bryan Fisher, Managing Director of RMI’s Climate-Aligned Industries programme, said the book and claim system was “a gamechanger” for the SAF market.

“Virtual ownership of SAF’s environmental attributes can accelerate the technology by unlocking new payers and their resources, and that is why SABA has prioritised participation in this pilot,” he said.

A book and claim system allows the separation of the physical SAF from its sustainability attributes and permits a company to purchase and claim the emission reductions from SAF use regardless of the physical fuel supply location. The company purchasing the sustainability attributes does not use the physical fuel, but claims the SAF credits, which represents a volume of CO2 emissions prevented. In this case, Microsoft purchased 21 SAF credits, representing 21 tonnes of SAF, resulting in a reduction of 53 tonnes of CO2 (calculated on the basis that one tonne of fuel emits 3.16 tonnes of CO2 and an 80% lifecycle reduction). As the customer does not have to use the fuel, purchasing the SAF credits are not limited to fuel users such as airlines but can be done by any company who wants to reduce their Scope 3 emissions.

United and Microsoft have previously purchased SAF, but this was the first time SAF environmental attributes have been transferred using RSB’s book and claim system. RSB is developing the system with input from multiple stakeholders across the aviation value chain, including airlines, fuel producers, corporate customers and others. Feedback from stakeholders and learning experiences during the pilot scheme will help RSB to develop rules in a book and claim manual as a guide for a robust, credible and transparent system that can be used by any stakeholder.

Transactions under a book and claim system will be recorded in a registry, which SABA will be developing in collaboration with RSB and Clean Skies for Tomorrow (CST), said Kim Carnahan, SABA Secretariat Lead and Senior Director Net Zero Fuels at ENGIE Impact. This universal electronic ledger or registry will be compatible with the RSB book and claim system, which will detail the rules for how credits can be booked and claimed. Carnahan further explained that the book and claim manual would allow environmental attributes from any SAF certified by RSB and ISCC to be claimed under the system.

The greatest concern with book and claim transactions is the risk of double counting occurring when SAF emissions may be counted more than once towards a climate mitigation effort. Pedro Piris-Cabezas, Director of Sustainable International Transport and Lead Senior Economist at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) discussed the risk at the recent RSB Annual Conference. Avoiding double counting starts with a robust book and claim system from an ICAO-approved Sustainability Certification Scheme such as RSB, he explained, with transactions recorded in a registry.

While there is a risk of double counting between air carriers and corporations, the accounting of emissions reductions by countries in their national inventory reports also poses a risk for double counting. Piris-Cabezas recommends the fuel supplier must secure a commitment from the host country to report the SAF as international bunker fuel in its national inventory reports to ensure that emissions reductions are not claimed twice. Under UNFCCC rules, international bunker fuels (aviation and shipping) are reported separately and are a source of emissions not addressed under countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Piris-Cabezas also highlighted the potential impact of a country’s policy environment and incentive schemes for SAF purchase under a book and claim system as a fuel producer would not be able to claim emission credits for the same SAF. SABA is providing guidance on how to simultaneously address UK policy requirements (as the SAF for the pilot was supplied and used in the UK) and recognise the emissions benefits for voluntary corporate purchases.

According to Elizabeth Willmott, Carbon Program Manager at Microsoft, the pilot offers the opportunity to ensure transparency and credibility for environmental claims for SAF purchases. RSB’s new Executive Director, Elena Schmidt, welcomed the participation of Microsoft and United in the RSB pilot project, which she said “took the pilot into the real world”. Microsoft’s commitment to sourcing RSB-certified fuel is an example of how companies can use their buying power to drive positive impacts, even outside their direct supply chains, she added.

Kelley Kizzier, EDF’s VP Global Climate, said SABA was looking forward to applying the lessons learned from the pilot to the development of an electronic book and claim registry, alongside RSB, so that more air transport customers could benefit.

At the recent COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, SABA announced the addition of an Aviators group to their membership, formed by Amazon Air, Alaska Airlines, JetBlue and United Airlines. SABA said the new group would help “send even stronger demand signal to drive greater SAF production, price reduction and technological innovation”. EDF and RMI also unveiled SABA’s formal membership structure at the COP26 event, opening membership opportunities to airlines, companies and non-profit organisations.

SABA was launched by RMI and EDF in April 2021 with founding members Boeing, Boston Consulting Group, Deloitte, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Netflix, Bank of America, McKinsey & Company, and Salesforce, with Meta (formerly Facebook) later joining as a founding member.

Photo: SABA’s Kim Carnahan presents the initiative during COP26. The event included a keynote from US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and a panel session with representatives from United Airlines, Alaska Air, Amazon, McKinsey & Company and Deloitte. A YouTube video recording is available here

Susan van Dyk

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Microsoft, Alaska Airlines and SkyNRG have entered into agreements whereby employees of the software giant will have the CO2 emissions from their air travel between Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and three West Coast destinations reduced through sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) credits purchased from SkyNRG. The funds from the credits will be used by SkyNRG to supply SAF produced by World Energy in California and delivered to the airport fuelling system used by Alaska Airlines. The three companies hope the partnership, the first of its kind in the United States, will serve as a model for other companies and organisations that are committed to reducing the environmental impact of business air travel. They said they would explore expanding the programme in the future and are supporting the development of a global environmental accounting standard for voluntary corporate SAF purchases.

“After a decade advancing sustainable aviation fuel, this partnership marks a significant milestone in the work to make SAF a commercially-viable aviation fuel alternative,” said Brad Tilden, CEO of Alaska Airlines. “SAF enables us to fly cleaner and reduce our impact on the environment. However, we cannot do this alone – we must work together with other industries and business leaders like Microsoft and SkyNRG, among others who are thinking big, to achieve our goals and grow the marketplace for SAF.”

The agreement between Alaska and Microsoft relates to flights by Microsoft employees from Seattle-Tacoma to San Francisco, San Jose and Los Angeles airports – the three most popular routes they travel on Alaska.

As part of Microsoft’s partnership agreement with SkyNRG, Microsoft will become the newest member of Board Now, a coalition of organisations committed to reducing carbon emissions from flying through directly contributing to the development of new SAF production capacity.

The SAF produced by World Energy uses waste oils and is claimed to deliver a life-cycle carbon reduction of 75% compared to fossil jet fuel and sustainability is guaranteed by SkyNRG through certification from the Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials.

“The emergence of a SAF production system and market is a once-in-a-century opportunity to launch a new energy source for an entire industry, guided by strong sustainability standards from day one,” said Theye Veen, SkyNRG’s Managing Director. “We are very pleased to be joined by leading companies Microsoft and Alaska Airlines in this next step.”

Microsoft has committed to be carbon negative by 2030 and by 2050 remove from the environment more carbon than it has emitted since its founding.

The company’s EVP Worldwide Commercial Business, Judson Althoff, told a World Economics Forum webinar this week that Microsoft’s carbon emissions from employee air travel accounted for around 400,000 tonnes each year.

“It’s easy to do certain things in getting to net zero carbon but air travel is one of the more difficult ones, so this year we decided to make an additional commitment relative to sustainability and while right now not many of us are travelling we do expect business travel to return to significant and substantial levels,” he said. 

“To address the challenge, we have formed partnerships with airlines like KLM and Alaska to invest in SAF for our business flights. In October, we partnered with KLM to purchase an amount of SAF equivalent to all flights taken by Microsoft employees between the US and the Netherlands. We’ve now built on this momentum by announcing a partnership with Alaska to acquire SAF for the total amount of fuel we would burn on Alaska for our busiest and most common routes for business travel.

“Whilst Covid has created a bit of relief on business travel, we expect to continue to travel in the future to engage with our customers and support them around the world, and we want to return to flying responsibly. 

“Right now, SAF is more expensive and so it is harder for energy companies to justify production, so you end up with a chicken and egg conundrum between supply and demand. In order to break this cycle, companies like Microsoft need to step forward so that energy companies can see the demand signal and produce more SAF, and so the costs will come down to allow airlines like KLM and Alaska to purchase more SAF. At the end of the day, we’re all in this together.”

Microsoft, SkyNRG and Alaska are participating in a pilot project of the World Economics Forum’s ‘Clean Skies for Tomorrow’ initiative to develop a global environmental accounting standard for voluntary corporate SAF purchases. They have also pledged to hold supplier and corporate forums to share learnings and increase interest in using SAF to lower the carbon emissions from business travel.

Photo: Alaska Airlines (Chad Slattery)