Biofuels Digest reports that ABO member LanzaTech, in partnership with Virgin, has produced the first 1,500 gallons of low-carbon jet fuel from industrial waste gases using its breakthrough fermentation process. It is the latest in a number of succesful commercialization milestones for LanzaTech.
To make the company’s fuels Lanzatech has also partnered with China-based Shougang, one of the worlds largest steel manufacturers, to harness the industrial waste gases from its steel plants and transform into ethanol, jet fuel, plastics and other valuable products. In this case the technology is creating a much-needed liquid fuel while also preventing greenhouse gases from immediately entering the atmosphere. The result is what Biofuels Digest calls “second chance carbon,” an opportunity to use carbon-containing gases and turn them into fuels that would otherwise be made from fossil oil.
Why jet fuel? Because liquid fuels will have a role to play in the future regardless of the rise of electric vehicles, and we much find ways to make them sustainably. Electric engines won’t be able to power every vehicle, especially aircraft, and in many analyses the greenhouse gas reductions from electric cars are easily matched, or exceeded, by the renewable fuels produced by companies like LanzaTech.