International Airlines Group Inks 14-year Twelve eSAF Deal, Jumpstarting Era of Fuels Made from CO2, Water

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) International Airlines Group announced a fourteen-year contract with Twelve to supply IAG with 785,000 tonnes* of e-SAF, made from made from CO2, water and renewable energy, to support five European airlines — British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Vueling and LEVEL. The next-generation fuel will reduce lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions by up to 90% versus conventional jet fuel. IAG is the first European airline group to announce an e-SAF deal, and the agreement will enable IAG to continue increasing its SAF use, which was approximately 12% of the world’s supply in 2023.

This deal brings the scale-up of e-SAF, produced using power-to-liquid technology, one step closer to reaching its full potential in the aviation industry. e-SAF does not face feedstock limitations, has a high degree of emissions reduction versus conventional jet fuel and has a relatively low land and water-use footprint.

Twelve has developed and patented a proprietary process that can produce high-quality synthetic fuels from renewable electricity and CO2. The company is constructing a demonstration plant in Moses Lake, Washington, which will supply the first SAF deliveries to IAG starting as early as 2025. The two companies first began partnering in 2020, when Twelve joined IAG’s Hangar 51 start-up accelerator programme to commercialise Twelve’s technology. READ MORE

Excerpt from GreenAir Online: The companies originally collaborated to commercialise Twelve’s Opus power-to-liquid fuel technology, which is designed to replicate the natural carbon-absorbing process of photosynthesis by combining CO2 with green hydrogen to create synthesis gas, or syngas, which is then to converted to liquid fuel.

Unlike physical feedstocks including waste fats, oils, greases, or solid waste that are used in other SAF production processes, CO2 is in abundant supply, extracted directly from industrial points of emission, biogenic waste or the atmosphere, while green hydrogen is made by using renewable electricity to divide water into hydrogen and oxygen.

The group has SAF procurement commitments valued at $865 million with providers including UK-based Phillips 66, Neste in Finland and Singapore, US producers LanzaTech and Gevo, and through its membership of the oneworld global airline alliance, British Airways will this year start acquiring SAF from Aemetis at airports in California.

BA has also invested in LanzaJet, which recently began producing alcohol-to-jet SAF at its new Freedom Pines Fuels plant in Soperton, Georgia, and in hydrogen propulsion start-up ZeroAvia, which is progressing the conversions of turboprop aircraft to hydrogen-electric fuel cell powertrains. Additionally, the airline has partnered with Velocys in construction of a waste-to-fuel SAF plant at Immingham, in the UK.

As well, the UK Government’s Advanced Fuels Fund recently granted £9 million to IAG’s Project Speedbird, an ethanol-to-jet fuel collaboration in the UK between British Airways, LanzaJet and Nova Pangaea. READ MORE

Excerpt from Business Traveler: And in November British Airways announced it had secured £9 million in funding for its sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) partnership dubbed Project Speedbird.

The carrier is working with Teesside-based cleantech company Nova Pangaea Technologies, and leading ethanol to SAF technology firm LanzaJet, with the project set to produce 102 million litres of SAF per year by 2028.

In October Lufthansa signed a Letter of Intent with organisations including Airbus and Munich airport for “a broad-based research collaboration on Power-to-Liquid (PtL) aviation fuels”.

The agreement – which also involves MTU Aero Engines and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) – is intended to accelerate the technology selection, market introduction and industrial scaling of PtL aviation fuels in Germany. READ MORE

Excerpt from Aerotime Hub: Twelve has a pilot plant in Moses Lake, Washington, United States, where the first batches of SAF will be produced. However, speaking with AeroTime in 2023, Ashwin Jadhav, Vice President, Business Development at Twelve, confirmed that the firm is looking at five or six other locations in the US Midwest to scale up its power-to-liquids SAF production in the coming years.

In addition to IAG, Twelve has also announced deals with Abu Dhabi-based airline Etihad to supply SAF from 2025/26 and has a partnership with Alaska Airlines. READ MORE