Hawaiian Airlines has signed an agreement with Gevo to purchase
50 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) over a five-year
period.
Gevo expects to supply the SAF from a facility
that will be
constructed in the Midwestern United States with deliveries
to Hawaiian’s gateway cities in California scheduled to start in 2029.
“Gevo is pleased to welcome Hawaiian Airlines
to our customer family of airlines that are working hard to
achieve their net zero goals,” said Gevo CEO, Dr. Patrick Gruber.
“By counting all of the carbon, analyzed using Argonne’s GREET
(Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in
Transportation) method, we are working to help airlines realize
these goals.”
Argonne National Laboratory’s GREET model
measures the greenhouse gas life cycle impacts of fuels, from
feedstock to production through combustion.
Gevo will
produce SAF using residual starch from inedible field corn, grown
using regenerative farming practices. The production process also
will utilize renewable electricity and renewable natural gas,
resulting in low-carbon fuels with substantially reduced carbon
intensity (the level of greenhouse gas emissions compared to
standard petroleum fossil-based fuels across their life cycle).
Gevo’s process is designed to maximize value and minimize waste by
using the same acre of farmland to produce both animal feed and
renewable fuels while sequestering atmospheric carbon through
photosynthesis.
The fuel sales agreement is subject to
certain conditions precedent, including Gevo developing,
financing, and constructing the facility to produce the SAF
contemplated by the agreement.
“This offtake agreement gets us one step closer to achieving
our goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050,” said Peter Ingram,
Hawaiian’s President and CEO. “We intend to continue to invest in
SAF, which will be pivotal in reducing our impact on the
environment.”
Hawaiian has launched
several sustainability initiatives in recent years including a
partnership with Par Hawaii, the state’s largest provider of
energy products, to study the commercial viability of producing
SAF in Hawaiʻi.
