Wednesday 22 June 2022

Avfuel invests in cleantech company Alder Fuels

Avfuel Corporation has announced a multi-million-dollar investment in Alder Fuels, a cleantech company developing technologies to produce sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) at scale.

The latter company converts biomass such as regenerative grasses and forest and agricultural residues into low carbon crude oil that replaces fossil crude in existing refineries producing SAF.

Alder's technology is said to have the ability to produce an “ultra-low to negative carbon crude oil” that when refined, meets current jet fuel specifications.

Its bio-crude refined into SAF is currently in the process of global certification as a 100% drop-in replacement for petroleum-based jet fuel and expects the SAF to be available in the first quarter of 2024.

According to the US Department of Energy, US forestry residues and agricultural residues alone could provide enough biomass energy to generate more than 17 billion gallons of jet fuel and displace 75% of US aviation fuel consumption.

Under the agreement, Avfuel will buy one billion gallons of SAF over a 20-year period and supply it to businesses and commercial aviation.

C.R. Sincock, Executive Vice President of Avfuel said: “Avfuel is committed to providing sustainable solutions for its customers, including business aviation, fixed based operators and airlines.

“We have been a forerunner in supplying SAF to business aviation and this transformative agreement builds upon our commitment to lead its adoption. Avfuel is making investments via ATIC to ensure SAF is available and we are excited to partner with Alder in scaling the fuel globally. This is an important milestone in business aviation's SAF adoption story but we realise reaching net zero targets will require a collective effort industry-wide to provide and embrace sustainable fuels. Only together can we reach this new height.”