New Report Finds There are $4-6 in Benefits to the U.S. Economy for Every $1 of Federal SAF Incentives at Gevo’s Net-Zero 1 Facility

August 13, 2024

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(Gevo) Research by Charles River Associates (“CRA”) demonstrates clear economic and environmental benefits utilizing this business system -- Gevo, Inc. (NASDAQ: GEVO) today released a new report by Charles River Associates demonstrating the benefits of sustainable aviation fuel (“SAF”) production, including at Gevo’s planned Net-Zero 1 (“NZ1”) alcohol-to-jet (“ATJ”) SAF facility in South Dakota. CRA’s findings in the report show that every $1.00 from federal tax credits for ATJ SAF yields an estimated $4-6 of total quantified benefits. The research, commissioned by Gevo, also demonstrates how the proposed NZ1 facility is expected to directly support local economies, drive down emissions, and improve our nation’s energy security.

“Practical, economical products like SAF provide our communities with clear benefits. We believe that not only will the sustainable jet fuel produced at NZ1 be cost-effective, but it will also help to lower emissions, create good-paying jobs, and bolster agricultural markets nationwide. It doesn’t have to be a tradeoff. This report shows that reducing greenhouse gas emissions in a business system like ours generates a payback for all of us, in addition to the project economics itself,” said Lindsay Fitzgerald, Gevo’s Senior Vice President of Public Affairs. “The exciting benefits of NZ1 are not limited to South Dakota—Gevo has identified several potential sites in other states. We look forward to replicating these efforts in other localities and appreciate the continued collaboration with our federal partners to make this, and other facilities, a reality.”

The report prepared by CRA shows that NZ1 would be a game-changer for scaling SAF production and uplifting local communities. Facilitating significant carbon reductions in jet fuel is needed to meet industrywide net-zero goals and provide needed certainty to farmers. The report’s key findings include:

Energy and environmental benefits

Avoided impacts valued at $2/gallon from reduced lifecycle GHG emissions by replacing fossil jet fuel with ATJ SAF;
Substituting fossil jet fuel with ATJ SAF generates a value of $0.12/gallon in avoided health impacts from reduced particulate matter emissions during flight;
Implementing climate-smart agriculture practices yields improved air and water quality, reduced GHG emissions, and more money in farmers’ pockets to grow crop feedstocks in place of conventional farming practices, valued at $0.90/gallon; and
Improved energy security by choosing a home-grown solution, resulting in domestic infrastructure and jobs expansion with continued agriculture partnership and distributing jet fuel production more broadly across the country.

Local economic benefits

Provides $116 million of value added annually to the local economy from direct, indirect, and induced impacts of NZ1’s expected operations;
Supports 100 jobs at the NZ1 plant and creates an additional 736 local jobs;
Contributes incremental economic value that is returned to the federal government in the form of tax revenue, estimated at $23 million annually or $0.38/gallon of SAF annually; and
Adds the interim benefit of $184 million in local economic value and supports 1,266 jobs during construction of NZ1.

To learn more about NZ1’s benefits, read the full report prepared by CRA here. Note that the report is based on certain assumptions and scenarios as laid out in the report. The foregoing description of the report does not purport to be complete and is subject to, and is qualified in its entirety by, the full text of such report.

About Gevo

Gevo’s mission is to transform renewable energy and carbon into energy-dense liquid hydrocarbons. These liquid hydrocarbons can be used for drop-in transportation fuels such as gasoline, jet fuel and diesel fuel, that when burned have potential to yield net-zero greenhouse gas emissions when measured across the full life cycle of the products. Gevo uses low-carbon renewable resource-based carbohydrates as raw materials, and is in an advanced state of developing renewable electricity and renewable natural gas for use in production processes, resulting in low-carbon fuels with substantially reduced carbon intensity (the level of greenhouse gas emissions compared to standard petroleum fossil-based fuels across their life cycle). Gevo’s products perform as well or better than traditional fossil-based fuels in infrastructure and engines, but with substantially reduced greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to addressing the problems of fuels, Gevo’s technology also enables certain plastics, such as polyester, to be made with more sustainable ingredients. Gevo’s ability to penetrate the growing low-carbon fuels market depends on the price of oil and the value of abating carbon emissions that would otherwise increase greenhouse gas emissions. Gevo believes that its proven, patented technology enabling the use of a variety of low-carbon sustainable feedstocks to produce price-competitive low-carbon products such as gasoline components, jet fuel and diesel fuel yields the potential to generate project and corporate returns that justify the build-out of a multi-billion-dollar business.

Gevo believes that the Argonne National Laboratory GREET model is the best available standard of scientific-based measurement for life cycle inventory or LCI.

Learn more at Gevo’s website: www.gevo.com READ MORE

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It’s Like Free Money! (Biofuels Digest)
New report for Gevo highlights SAF benefits (Biofuels International)

Excerpt from Biofuels Digest: (B)ecause you’d be hard pressedf to get a 6-to-1 return on gold mining, even in the days of the Klondike and the Comstock Lode.

Turns out, better to support Comstock Fuels than the Comstock Lode.

Why, you might ask? Well, bioeconomy ventures work in many ways. They support local economies through job creartion, operators and buioers. They support regional economies through supporting farm prices. They support state economies because states are supported, as former Iowa Governor Terry Branstad has been intent on explaining to me over the years, to a great extent by real estate taxes. Land doesn’t vote, but land pays.

The benefits do not stop at jobs and taxes. What do states support with their revenue base? For one, education. People that study at home often study the majors that are important at home, as in agricultural science and economics. People with skills most valuable at home tend to stay home, and the more skilled they become, the less likely they are to move to the big smoke where their skills and experience is of less value. The extended family helps raise, educate and enthrall the next generation. Society wins in many ways that cannot be measured in money.

That’s something that we don’t talk much about when we say “social sustainability” even when we talk about it at all. For too many people, sustainability is about emissions, for others, it is the dollars that keeps enterprises going for the long term. When we talke about social sustainability, often this is a code for making society more egalitarian and neutral when it comes to gender, creed and so forth. Worthy goals, but not the only ones. Keeping the family together, keeping it prosperous enough to find the pursuit of happiness an easier task.

Yet, even if you could care a fig about rural communities, lfollow he money, or follow the emissions.

What can states do to bathe themselves in the benefits. Soap themselves with dollars, wash their emissions away, spritz the familes back together again?

So, establish more incentives, those of you in a position to do so.

It’s, like, free money. READ MORE