Southwest Airlines invests $30 million into LanzaJet

Sustainable fuel producer LanzaJet has announced a $30 million investment by Southwest Airlines, with the two to collaborate on a new sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production facility. They will also work to advance the operations of a corn stover to ethanol company in which Southwest is invested. The upcoming biorefinery will use LanzaJet’s proprietary alcohol-to-jet (AtJ) technology, which employs ethanol as a feedstock. “The alignment of Southwest and LanzaJet is a powerful combination that has the potential to integrate the SAF value chain and to double-down on the US ethanol, aviation, and biofuel industries,” said Jimmy Samartzis, chief executive officer of LanzaJet. The new facility is also intended to enable the opportunity to convert SAFFiRE’s cellulosic ethanol into SAF. This method uses the agricultural by-product corn stover: the stalks, leaves and husks left behind after corn is harvested. Samartzis described this collaboration as “tapping into the US ethanol industry’s potential to catalyze the next generation of SAF production”.