Twelve to supply sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) certificates to organizations representing the Sustainable Aviation Buyers Alliance for five years.
Author: Ashwin Jadhav, VP, Business Development
Earlier this week, the Sustainable Aviation Buyers Alliance (SABA) announced the largest ever collection of deals that brought together travelers, airlines, non-governmental organizations and fuel providers to purchase high-integrity E-Jet Attributes1.
Twelve is very proud to have been selected as the only Power-to-Liquid (PtL) SAF producer as part of this historic purchase of SAF certificates (SAFc) to grow investment in clean fuel technologies.
Over the span of five years, large corporations, including Autodesk, BCG, Mckinsey & Co., Novo Nordisk and the Environmental Defense Fund, are channeling close to $200 million into purchasing SAFc equal to about 50 million gallons of high integrity SAF, or 500,000 tons of CO2e2 from various SAF producers. This is roughly equivalent to the emissions of 3,000 fully loaded passenger flights from New York City to London.
Why are Corporate Customers Purchasing SAF Certificates?
Corporations indirectly contribute to emissions, also known as Scope 3, from corporate travel and various business operations. Purchasing SAFc allows corporate travelers to invest in SAF, capture the environmental benefits, and offset their Scope 3 emissions. The travelers’ investment allows them to make a greenhouse gas reduction claim on their climate disclosures, while the physical SAF flows to an aircraft operator.
SAF is a drop-in fuel made with renewable or waste feedstocks. It can be used in today’s aircraft without investments to upgrade existing fleets and infrastructure, and can significantly reduce the carbon pollution from flight. SAF purchased through the SABA transaction achieves significant reductions in carbon intensity relative to conventional jet fuel, with sustainability performance certified by a third-party across the fuel’s supply chain.
The Power-to-Liquid Advantage
There are many pathways that are used to produce SAF using different feedstock, as published in Twelve’s Know Your SAF Report. The Power-to-Liquid pathway, also sometimes called synthetic fuels, E-Fuels, or Power-to-X, does not use direct organic compounds as feedstocks like other pathways and is therefore not a biofuel.
Instead, the PtL pathway uses direct CO2, renewable electricity, and water as feedstocks. These feedstocks combine to create syngas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide (CO). The syngas is then put through a conversion step, such as Fischer-Tropsch, methanol synthesis, or gas fermentation, to produce liquid products that can then be upgraded to the appropriate C8-C16 hydrocarbon chain lengths to make SAF. As long as renewable electricity is used with biogenic or Direct Air Capture (DAC) CO2, PtL fuels can have up to 90% emissions reduction over fossil fuels.
Learn more, download Know Your SAF: Guide to Sustainable Aviation Fuels
“As global demand for aviation and SAF grows, partners like SABA will be increasingly crucial to bring the full range of aviation stakeholders to the table,” says Nicholas Flanders, Co-Founder and CEO of Twelve. “Innovative power-to-liquid fuels will deliver deeper emissions reductions, but need the support of airlines and corporations in order to scale.
We’re proud to join with SABA and its collective of forward-minded corporate customers, airlines, and fellow fuel providers to deliver E-Jet® fuel and help pioneer the market for high-integrity SAF certificates.”
We’re proud to join with SABA and its collective of forward-minded corporate customers, airlines, and fellow fuel providers to deliver E-Jet® fuel and help pioneer the market for high-integrity SAF certificates.
Through various discussions with customers, partners and investors, it has become very clear that these multi-year deals are critical in driving scale in the SAF market. Long-term certainty about demand helps fuel producers secure financing for future plant expansions, which will enable higher volumes of SAF in the marketplace sooner.
Building a Digital Ecosystem to Drive Traceability
To bring greater transparency and integrity to the sale and purchase of these E-Jet Attributes™, SABA co-founders Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) developed the digital SAFc Registry, which is being used as the central platform to record the sales conducted through this RFP. Building on industry best practices, the digital registry creates an auditable ledger to ensure SAF certificates exchanged realize their intended environmental impact and can be claimed towards emissions reduction goals.
The SAFc Registry plays a critical role in the SAF ecosystem by bringing greater consistency and transparency to SAFc transactions, building trust along the SAF value chain, and helping send a strong demand signal for the low-carbon fuels needed to decarbonize the aviation sector.
Momentum in the Industry
Producers like Twelve are benefiting from several policies that promote the adoption of SAF. Such deals support the implementation of policies and build on the momentum in the power-to-liquid SAF domain. Earlier this year, Twelve and the International Airlines Group, parent company of British Airways, announced one of the largest long-term SAF deals in the industry.
This multi-year SABA deal, which involves 20 business travel customers, four fuel providers, and three airlines, demonstrates the power of corporate demand to scale up investments in promising sustainable fuels that can drive decarbonization of the aviation industry.
1 E-Jet Attributes™ are Scope 3 environmental attributes generated from Twelve’s E-Jet® fuel, which is produced using a power-to-liquid technology. The attributes are retired using SAF certificates (SAFc) on the SABA registry. 2 CO2e is defined as the total amount of CO2 abated as a result of the use of alternative sources/feedstocks versus conventional JetA fuel.