New $800M Sustainable Aviation Fuel Plant Planned for Washington State

Alcohol/Ethanol/Isobutanol Aviation Fuel/Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF)BioRefineries/Renewable Fuel Production Biorefinery/Fuel Production Infrastructure Business News/Analysis Federal Agency/Executive Branch Feedstocks Funding/Financing/Investing Green Jobs Infrastructure Manure Methane/Biogas Netherlands Opinions Other Conferences/Events Policy Presentations Sustainability Washington White House

May 23, 2023

Print This Article Share it With Friends

by Dominic Gates (Seattle Times) Dutch company SkyNRG has chosen Washington state to locate a major new biogas plant that will produce sustainable aviation fuel — a key part of the airline world’s push to decarbonize flying.

In an interview Wednesday on the sidelines of a Boeing conference on aviation sustainability in Renton, SkyNRG CEO Philippe Lacamp said he expects the plant to be operational by 2028 or 2029. Its construction will provide about 600 jobs, and running it thereafter will provide about 100 permanent new jobs, he said.

Previously SkyNRG, which has its U.S. office in Bend, Oregon, had said it was looking for a location somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Lacamp said new state legislation signed this month by Gov. Jay Inslee that provides sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, subsidies and speeds permits for plant construction tip the scale for Washington.

The legislation “positions Washington state as the most attractive, most supportive state for SAF,” he said. “It’s the most generous state in the nation now.”

...

A bill sponsored by state Senate Majority Leader Andy Billig, D-Spokane, creates tax credits that will provide subsidies of up to $2 per gallon for SAF, which is 2 to 5 times more expensive than regular jet fuel that currently costs about $2.17 per gallon.

A separate bill will accelerate permitting and environmental review for construction of clean energy plants.

“This is what we hoped would happen,” Billig said Thursday. “It’s rewarding to see this bill pay dividends for the state so quickly.”

...

For Wednesday’s aviation sustainability conference in Renton, Boeing brought together leading representatives of airlines, Wall Street financiers, global aviation regulators and government policymakers to discuss the challenge of aviation meeting its goal to decarbonize by 2050.

...

This transition to decarbonized flying will be costly, as air travelers will discover in the years ahead, because SAF is expensive to produce.

Willie Walsh, director general of the International Air Transport Association, or IATA, warned via video conference from Geneva on Wednesday that airlines will have to pass along the extra cost of SAF in higher ticket prices.

Before we get there though, the biggest issue is that, after years of talk about developing SAF, there is precious little actually produced.

...

The White House has set goals to produce 3 billion gallons of SAF per year by 2030, and 35 billion gallons per year by 2050.

...

Chris Raymond, Boeing’s chief sustainability officer, said in an interview that failing to produce SAF at large scale could stunt the growth of aviation as governments impose limits on carbon emissions.

“That is the threat that sits out there,” Raymond said.

Boeing is using its clout to try to get movement. It partnered with SkyNRG specifically by committing in 2021 to the advance purchase of SAF from its facility here for use in Boeing flight tests and other operations.

Boeing also lobbied in Olympia for the passage of the clean energy bills to support SAF production.

...

Since its founding in 2009 — spun off from a study done for Dutch airline KLM, which is a shareholder in the company — SkyNRG has been focused entirely on developing SAF technology.

Yet it is essentially still a startup, with only about 50 employees and just three of those in the U.S.

...

In Holland, Lacamp said it is closing in on a final investment decision on a plant producing SAF via the used oils and fats pathway.

But the one it plans for Washington state will use a different chemical pathway: It’s dubbed “alcohol-to-jet” and consists of fermenting carbon waste to produce ethanol that is then converted to fuel.

The feedstock will be waste gases, chiefly methane, derived from agricultural or municipal landfill waste.

“Think around dairy farms, for example,” Lacamp said.

...

Even more ambitiously, SkyNRG plans another plant in Holland using a third, different pathway — the greenest SAF of all — called “power-to-liquid,” which uses renewably sourced electricity to produce “green hydrogen” that is then combined with carbon dioxide captured from the atmosphere to produce fuel.

...

Joe Shanahan, managing director, head of aviation at investment bank Citi, said investors will hesitate until airlines step up and sign long-term contracts to buy the fuel, despite the premium price.

The Washington state per-gallon subsidy could prove critical for that to happen.

...

“When you’re doing the first-of-a-kind facility, you’re going to learn a lot,” said Lecamp, adding that the lessons will then be applied to replicate similar plants around the world.

“From the very beginning, this company has been focused on sustainable aviation fuel,” Lecamp said. “We understand the feedstocks. We understand the technologies. We know that it has to happen for aviation to reach its 2050 net zero target. And we’re all in on that.” READ MORE

Boeing boss cools hopes for sustainable aviation fuels (Trend Fool)

$800 Million SAF Plant Set To Open In Washington State (Simple Flying)

Excerpt from Trend Fool: But SAF currently accounts for less than 1 per cent of global aviation consumption and trades for at least twice the price of traditional jet fuel.

“We will create scale and get more economic,” Boeing chief executive Dave Calhoun said. But he added: “No, I don’t think we will ever achieve the price of Jet A. I don’t think that will ever happen. It is more positive and it will have an impact, but it’s gonna be what it’s gonna be.”

The comments from Calhoun echo concerns raised privately in the sector about the difficulties — and expense — involved in decarbonising an industry that, in creating mass transcontinental travel, represented one of the crowning achievements of the petroleum era.

“He’s saying the quiet bit aloud,” said Robert Campbell, head of energy transition research at Energy Aspects, referring to Calhoun’s comments. “There are no cheap ways to do SAF — if there were, we would already be doing them.”

...

Tax credits for SAF production in the US were among vast clean energy subsidies in the Biden administration’s sweeping Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), passed last year. The EU has also mandated that airports use increasing volumes of SAFs to fuel jets in Europe.

The International Air Transport Association, a trade group including the world’s biggest airlines, set a target in 2021 to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. SAF would account for 65 per cent of the abatement, Iata reckons.

But the move would be costly, said Willie Walsh, the former chief executive of British Airways, who runs Iata.

“It is achievable,” he told a Financial Times conference last week. But “anyone who says the costs of transitioning to net zero are going to be low or unnoticeable I’m afraid is fooling themselves”.

“Passengers will have to pay higher fares. We need to be honest with our customers”, Walsh said. “Airlines are not in a financial position to absorb that cost, so ultimately it will have to be passed on to consumers.”

...

The Biden administration, which has set industry a “grand challenge” to produce 3bn gallons a year of SAF by 2030 from less than 16mn now, says feedstock will come from agricultural waste produced alongside corn and soyabeans, and woody biomass in western states.

...

Tom Vilsack, the US secretary of agriculture, said the IRA tax credits would help the industry overcome that investment roadblock, although price parity with jet fuel would not be achieved soon.

“At the beginning you’re going to have government support and assistance . . . to learn the efficiencies that need to go into ultimately getting that price down”, Vilsack told the Financial Times last week. READ MORE