How this sustainable jet fuel company is charting a new path in the era of Trump
By Sean Captain | Published: 2025-10-30 09:15:00 | Source: Fast Company – technology
A refinery, the first of its kind, was established a decade and a half ago. The facility is scheduled to be completed this year and is designed to produce environmentally friendly jet fuel, a material that is in increasing demand in response to climate commitments and regulations around the world. The refinery – called Freedom Pines Fuels – was designed to demonstrate new ways of producing fuel, and was receiving government support to help streamline air travel.
Now, a year behind schedule due to a hurricane and equipment malfunction, the project hit another roadblock this summer, when a major shift in U.S. energy policy under the new administration radically changed the business model. It is now the story of a company adapting quickly under pressure, and an example of the challenges – and continuing opportunities – of clean energy in a more hostile political environment.
The goal of the company behind the project, Illinois-based LanzaJet, is to produce an exact replica of the kerosene-based fuel that powers airplanes and many helicopters and helicopters today — without using petroleum. Instead, the Freedom Pines Fuel Plant in the forest village of Soperton, Georgia, will use ethanol to make what is known as sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF. LanzaJet was ready to start with ethanol made from Brazil. sugarcane, until a new U.S. law forced a rapid switch to corn in the Midwest.
The fuels that make modern travel possible—kerosene, gasoline, and diesel—are usually refined from crude oil, rich in hydrocarbon molecules that release abundant energy when burned. But burning them also floods the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, which traps heat.
SAF is essentially laboratory-produced jet fuel, made from carbon already in the environment, rather than pumped from oil wells. It’s a modified formula — i.e., lower sulfur — designed for a cleaner burn. Sugarcane and corn are among many potential carbon sources, along with corn stalks, twigs, vegetable oils, factory exhaust, and even garbage. In theory, the carbon dioxide produced by manufacturing and burning SAF should be offset by carbon captured to produce more SAF, forming a closed loop.
The Freedom Pines Fuels plant is a scaled-down version of a typical refinery, slated to produce nine million gallons of SAF and 1 million of green diesel in its first year. (A standard crude oil refinery can produce a billion gallons or more of fuel.)
But the Georgia plant is supposed to be large enough to show that the technology can work on a large scale. “Most process technology companies . It’s expensive, it’s big.” But we thought and felt – accurately, looking at it today – that it was the right step to take. Ahead of the 2024 election, the federal government also promised generous financial support to Freedom Pines.
Potential market boom
LanzaJet is backed by companies that are counting on or will benefit from the transition to carbon-neutral jet fuel, including All Nippon Airways, British Airways, Southwest Airlines and planemaker Airbus.
The United Nations International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has committed the industry to reducing net carbon emissions to zero by 2050. In addition, laws and regulations, such as in Singapore, the United Kingdom and the European Union, have begun requiring airlines or suppliers to blend SAF into jet fuel supplies, starting at around 1-2%, then ramping up in subsequent years. More such requirements are underway in India, Indonesia and Japan. The European Union is the most ambitious of all. What is required today is a mixture of 2% sulfuric acid, and the shares rise sharply about every five years, until they reach 70% in 2050.
There is additional demand from companies, such as Microsoft backer LanzaJet, that are striving to meet stringent greenhouse gas reduction targets. In addition to reducing its footprint, Microsoft announced plans to purchase “SAF certificates,” which subsidize the cost of fuel to promote its use. The SAF has a long way to go in making an impact. It will account for just 0.7% of total jet fuel in 2025, according to the International Air Transport Association.
“Obviously, if you look at the overall size of the aviation fuel space, in theory, the (SAF) market is potentially huge for those who can offer a product at a competitive price,” says John McDonagh, senior research analyst at capital markets research firm PitchBook.
LanzaJet has raised “nearly” $400 million, according to Samartzis, from these companies and other backers, including energy producers Shell and Suncor, the US Department of Energy, airport operator Groupe ADP, and Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Fund.
Another backer is LanzaTech. The company was founded in Auckland, New Zealand, in 2005, then moved its headquarters to Skokie, Illinois, in 2014. The company has designed microbes to convert waste such as carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide from plants into ethanol, as another way to carbon-neutral fuels and other chemicals. In 2010, LanzaTech and the US Department of Energy began collaborating on technology to convert ethanol into jet fuel. In 2020, LanzaTech spun off LanzaJet as a new company to continue the business
LanzaJet is entering the SAF market with Freedom Pines, with plans to build more factories, such as collaborating with British Airways to open a facility in the UK by 2028. LanzaJet has also announced partnerships in India, Japan and Kazakhstan to build additional facilities. But as it continued to announce expansion abroad, things became chaotic at home.
SAF meets MAGA
The United States does not have SAF requirements for airlines. Instead, the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act provided tax breaks to support the SAF’s fledgling operations to increase production and lower prices. (Various estimates put the cost of SAF at two to five times the cost of conventional jet fuel.) While the Republican “Big Beautiful Bill” did not completely eliminate SAF incentives, as it did with many other clean technologies, it complicated LanzaJet’s plans just as it was completing the Freedom Pines plant.
LanzaJet has been approved by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to use conventional ethanol in the manufacture of its fuel. The company has focused on Brazilian sugarcane, which Samartzis says would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than a 50% threshold to qualify for credits under the inflation-reducing law. New Republican legislation reduced the maximum subsidies from $1.75 to $1 a gallon – limiting them to fuels made with resources from the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
So, LanzaJet shifted its focus to ethanol made from U.S. corn, which is higher in carbon, for a number of reasons, Samartzis says. Sugarcane tends to have higher yields per acre, with less fertilizer, according to LanzJet, and of course provides sugar that can be fermented directly into ethanol. Corn provides starch that must first be converted into sugar, which consumes energy. Brazilian ethanol producers also use crop residues, which they burn to provide energy for their operations. American producers often use natural gas or even coal.
Given all that, using corn won’t cut total greenhouse gas emissions anywhere near the 50% goal, without long-term changes like more sustainable agricultural practices and capturing carbon emitted in the ethanol industry, he says.
Despite all these challenges, Samartzis says Freedom Pines will begin producing the fuel soon. “Yes, you stumbled past, didn’t you?” he says with a chuckle. “But my expectation is that it is definitely this year.” . . when? “I don’t want to speculate about that at this stage.”
Meanwhile, LanzaJet has to compete with an established technology, called HEFA, which already makes jet fuel from fats such as used cooking oil. “Most (SAF demand) currently can be met, or initially entirely met, with the least expensive HEFA fuels in production,” says Andy Navarrete, co-author of Most (SAF Demand) Currently. A recent study on sustainable aviation fuel By the International Council on Clean Transportation
A new starting point
However, he says the HEFA project cannot expand in the face of the boom in demand coming in the coming decades, without resorting to environmentally destructive options such as clearing land for palm oil plantations. Navarrete is also cautious about corn ethanol. “You don’t get a lot of savings in greenhouse gases compared to just using (conventional) jet fuel,” he says.
“Then there’s this bigger question of food versus fuel. How sustainable is the use of farmland for fuel production overall?”
Samartzis cites USDA estimates that U.S. ethanol supplies exceed domestic demand and positions SAF as a new market for American farmers. But beyond corn and sugarcane, there may be greater climate benefits in making ethanol from cellulose found in agricultural food waste – such as corn stalks, leaves, husks and cobs – that might otherwise release carbon dioxide when they rot.
This approach has always been part of LanzaJet’s strategy, and it has already submitted its plan to the EPA for approval. (The UK plant is supposed to begin operations using this “cellulosic” ethanol when it opens in 2028.) But American policy creates another bump in the road. “All of these things take time, and with the government shutdown, rest assured, these processes are not moving forward at this time,” Samartzis says.
Navarrete is skeptical, noting that makers of green auto fuels have also anticipated a development toward using cellulose from agricultural waste. “It relied on a completely different set of techniques.” . . “It was never discovered,” he says. “(Starting with) conventional ethanol wasn’t really a useful bridge forward.”
The technology has evolved since then, with new incentives to fill the growing SAF market. Samartzis remains optimistic about the long-term turnaround. “Maybe it’s a 10 or 20% improvement instead of a 50, 60 or 70% improvement,” he says of the initial CO2 reductions using corn ethanol. “We can start to monitor improvement and then continue to invest in the changes needed to further improve carbon intensity.”
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