Bill Gates Fund Invested $50M to Turn Alcohol Into Jet Fuel

GA – Bill Gates founded Breakthrough Energy and has recently announced that its first Catalyst project funding will come in the form of a $50 million grant to Lanza Jet’s Freedom Pines Fuels sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) plant in Soperton, Georgia. Breakthrough Energy Catalyst is a unique program that brings together businesses and nonprofits to fund key first-of-its-kind commercial-scale projects that speed up the deployment of essential technologies. Lanza Jet has already received a $14 million grant from the US Department of Energy and a combined $200 million from backers, including British Airways and Shell, per Bloomberg. In January, Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund, also founded by Gates, invested another $50 million towards the project.

“Breakthrough Energy Catalyst is a new way for the private sector to accelerate the clean energy transition by funding projects that will ensure essential climate solutions get to market on the timeline the world needs,” explains Rodi Guidero, Executive Director, Breakthrough Energy & Managing Partner, Breakthrough Energy Ventures.

“Lanza Jet’s new sustainable aviation fuel plant could play a vital role in decarbonizing aviation while demonstrating how the jobs and businesses of the clean energy economy can power communities. We’re grateful to Catalyst’s partners, who understand climate leadership means supporting the technologies that will eliminate emissions and that solving our climate challenges will require nothing less than mobilizing the world’s economic engine to build a net-zero future,” he added.

The company’s first commercial-scale SAF plant will be Lanza Jet’s Freedom Pines Fuels project. It will also be the first plant in the world to make alcohol-to-jet SAF, which it is hoped could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 70% compared to fossil jet fuel. The project is set to be finished in 2023.

This is potentially a big deal as about 2 percent to 3 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from aviation annually. Since sustainable aviation fuels are “drop-in” fuels, they are essential to quickly reduce carbon emissions from aviation using the planes already in use worldwide.