LanzaJet partners with Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund towards net-zero sustainable aviation fuels
LanzaJet, a sustainable fuels technology company and renewable fuels producer, announces it has secured financing for its Freedom Pines Fuels plant in Soperton, Georgia, through the Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund. The Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund has made a $50M investment to support the construction of LanzaJet’s (and the world’s) first alcohol-to-jet sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) production plant. The structure of Microsoft’s financing will enable LanzaJet to bring lower-cost sustainable aviation fuels and renewable diesel to the global market.
It is expected to be completed by the end of 2022 and begin producing 10 million gallons of SAF and renewable diesel per year from sustainable ethanol, including from waste-based feedstocks in 2023.
Aiming for 1B gallons of SAF production
LanzaJet produces sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) and renewable diesel from low-carbon, sustainable ethanol sources. This investment also creates the opportunity for LanzaJet and the Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund to work together in enabling LanzaJet, through the Freedom Pines Fuels plant, to catalyze the market for 2nd generation, waste-based ethanol feedstock, demonstrating clear demand signals for ethanol that can achieve greater carbon reductions.
The Biden administration set a goal for achieving net-zero aviation emissions by 2050, with the E.U. wanting to increase the amount of SAF blended to 63% by 2050. In September of 2021, the White House announced a target of 3 billion gallons of SAF produced per year by 2030. As part of that announcement, LanzaJet shared it would strive to achieve 1B gallons of SAF production in the US by 2030, significantly supporting US ambitions.
LanzaJet continues to work with its founding investors to scale up the production of sustainable fuels to meet global demand and to enable the energy transition underway. Microsoft’s financial support of LanzaJet joins other LanzaJet funders including LanzaTech, Inc., Suncor Energy Inc., Mitsui & Co., Ltd., British Airways, Shell, and All Nippon Airways – all who are working together to catalyze and build a new global market for sustainable fuels.
“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,” says 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, ” adds Samartzis. “With Microsoft’s support, this first plant significantly expands the production of sustainable fuels in the US, establishes Georgia as a leader in cleantech, and is the foundation for us as the first alcohol-to-jet sustainable fuels producer, and as a blueprint for the commercial plants we’re developing globally.”
“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,” says Brandon Middaugh of Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund. “Decarbonizing 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.”
LanzaJet, Inc. is the world’s alcohol-to-jet technology leader and producer of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) and Renewable Diesel (RD) from ethanol. LanzaJet’s alcohol-to-jet 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). PNNL developed a unique catalytic process to upgrade ethanol to alcohol-to-jet synthetic paraffinic kerosene (ATJ-SPK) which LanzaTech took from the laboratory to pilot scale. LanzaJet is now commercially deploying the technology globally.