American Furthers Its Commitment to Sustainable Aviation Fuel

New agreement to purchase 500 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuel over five years from Gevo, Inc. brings the airline closer to meeting its ambitious sustainability goals
Jul 26, 2022 4:15 PM ET

FORT WORTH, Texas, July 26, 2022 /3BL Media/ - American Airlines announced it has finalized an agreement with biofuel company Gevo, Inc. for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Over five years, American has committed to purchasing 500 million gallons of SAF, the most significant SAF offtake commitment to date for the carrier.

“Today’s announcement is a historic step forward for American and our industry as we work to reduce our carbon footprint,” said Jill Blickstein, American’s Vice President of Sustainability. “The use of SAF is a cornerstone of our strategy to decarbonize air travel. While this landmark investment represents meaningful action by American Airlines, driving progress at the scale and pace we need requires critical policy action in Washington and at the State level. Alongside our oneworld partners, we’re proud to lead the way in the shift to SAF and make progress toward our shared climate goals.”

American’s Gevo agreement was developed alongside others in the oneworld® alliance. In September 2020, oneworld became the first global airline alliance to announce a target of carbon neutrality by 2050, establishing its commitment to long-term sustainability for the industry. The alliance followed up that commitment with an intermediate goal to achieve 10% SAF use across the member airlines by 2030.

The agreement brings American’s total low-carbon fuel commitments to more than 620 million gallons — fulfilling roughly 20% of the airline’s goal to replace 10% of jet fuel usage with SAF by 2030. The SAF deliveries are expected to begin in 2026 from future commercial operations of Gevo.

“The expansion of the global development of the SAF marketplace has reached an exciting point,” said Dr. Patrick R. Gruber, Gevo’s Chief Executive Officer. “While there is a tremendous amount of work to complete to bring all the critical elements of net-zero carbon SAF to the marketplace, our memoranda of understanding with oneworld alliance members and this subsequent commitment from American Airlines demonstrates the important momentum that is building for these types of products. I’m thrilled that Gevo is poised to continue to provide leadership for this product development.”

American’s aggressive climate goals include achieving net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050. That includes becoming the first airline globally to receive validation from the Science Based Targets initiative for its 2035 GHG emissions reduction targets. In 2021, American received a CDP Climate Change score of “A-” — the highest score among airlines in North America, and one of only two airlines globally to score that high. The company’s most recent ESG Report further details its forward-looking goals for the coming years and its progress to date.

More information about American’s sustainability strategy is available at aa.com/sustainability.

About American Airlines Group

To Care for People on Life’s Journey®. Shares of American Airlines Group Inc. trade on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol AAL and the company’s stock is included in the S&P 500. Learn more about what’s happening at American by visiting news.aa.com and connect with American on Twitter @AmericanAir and at Facebook.com/AmericanAirlines.

About Gevo

Gevo’s mission is to transform renewable energy and carbon into energy-dense liquid hydrocarbons. These liquid hydrocarbons can be used for drop-in transportation fuels such as gasoline, jet fuel and diesel fuel, that when burned have potential to yield net-zero greenhouse gas emissions when measured across the full life cycle of the products. Gevo uses low-carbon renewable resource-based carbohydrates as raw materials, and is in an advanced state of developing renewable electricity and renewable natural gas for use in production processes, 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 products perform as well or better than traditional fossil-based fuels in infrastructure and engines, but with substantially reduced greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to addressing the problems of fuels, Gevo’s technology also enables certain plastics, such as polyester, to be made with more sustainable ingredients. Gevo’s ability to penetrate the growing low-carbon fuels market depends on the price of oil and the value of abating carbon emissions that would otherwise increase greenhouse gas emissions. Gevo believes that its proven, patented technology enabling the use of a variety of low-carbon sustainable feedstocks to produce price-competitive low-carbon products such as gasoline components, jet fuel and diesel fuel yields the potential to generate project and corporate returns that justify the build-out of a multi-billion-dollar business. Gevo believes that the Argonne National Laboratory GREET model is the best available standard of scientific-based measurement for life cycle inventory or LCI. Learn more at Gevo’s website: www.gevo.com.