Clean Jet Fuel Startup Fires Up New Carbon Converter
Thursday a climate technology startup called Twelve "took a major step toward producing sustainable aviation fuel..." reports Bloomberg, "by launching its commercial-scale carbon transformation unit."Twelve is among the emerging companies working on ways to transform captured CO2 into useful products. In the case of the Berkeley, California-based startup, its nascent technology will be critical to cleaning up one of the hardest-to-decarbonize sectors: aviation. Twelve uses a technique called electrolysis that uses electricity to repurpose carbon dioxide and water into various products. When the electricity is generated from renewables, the process is essentially no-carbon. The company's CO2 electrochemical reactor - called OPUS - will be at the center of its first commercial production plant for sustainable aviation fuel, under construction in Moses Lake and set to be completed this year. The plant will run on hydropower and use CO2 captured from a nearby ethanol plant. That CO2 and water will be fed through OPUS and turned into synthetic gas, the basis of sustainable aviation fuel. Twelve's airline customers can blend it with traditional jet fuel. The resulting carbon credit can be bought by corporate customers like Microsoft to offset their business travel-related emissions... Although Twelve's carbon transformation technology can be used to make products ranging from spandex pants to car parts, it pivoted to focus more fully on sustainable aviation fuel after the announcement of tax credits for SAF blending, carbon capture and utilization, and hydrogen production, said Twelve co-founder and Chief Science Officer Etosha Cave. Those tax credits helped the company launch this commercial unit. "Without that, we would not be competitive in terms of being able to get to market at the stage we're at," Cave said. It's still not cost competitive with traditional jet fuel, the article points out, "but airlines are under increasing pressure from governments and their own net zero commitments to integrate SAF into their fuel mix. "Twelve would not disclose its cost to make the fuel, though it said it expects prices to go down as its technology scales up and eventually reach parity with traditional jet fuel."
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