Three Minnesota environmental groups issue guiding principles for the development of Sustainable Aviation Fuels

Here in South Dakota, much of the public discussion of the development of Sustainable Aviation Fuels has centered around the contentious issue of ethanol carbon pipelines.

Witness the October 2023 Dakota Scout article, Gevo’s $1B aviation fuel investment tied to Summit CO2 pipeline. Scott Waldman reported:

Without the Summit Carbon Solutions’ pipeline, what’s believed to be the largest capital investment in South Dakota’s history might not happen.

That was part of the message from Kent Hartwig, director of state government affairs with Gevo, at Tuesday’s Brown County Commission meeting at the courthouse annex.

Gevo is planning a plant near Lake Preston that would include an ethanol plant and a hydrocarbon plant that converts the ethanol into aviation jet fuel. The plant would be powered by an adjoining wind farm.

The ethanol-hydrocarbon plant is estimated to cost $850 million and the wind farm $150 million, for an overall investment of $1 billion. The wind farm would power the plant.  . . .

But the project needs a carbon capture pipeline if it is to succeed, Hartwig told commissions. It needs a place to permanently sequester carbon dioxide emissions underground, he said, adding that he sees Summit as its partner in that quest. . . .

Waltman reported that the plant would use 38 million bushels of corn a year to make 65 million gallons of aviation jet fuel annually.

A press release and set of guiding principles circulating today from Friends of the Mississippi River, Fresh Energy, and The Nature Conservancy reveals a more complicated formula and certainly recommends the exploration of different fuel stocks.

Here are the documents for my readers edification.

Sustainable Aviation Fuels: How we can get it right

Key groups issue guiding principles to benefit people and nature

 

MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL— Three of Minnesota’s leading conservation and energy organizations released recommendations today to ensure that sustainable aviation fuel lives up to its name.

 

Aviation accounts for nearly 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector in the United States, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. With aircraft emissions on the rise, federal and state governments are urgently seeking ways to reduce aviation industry emissions through low-carbon fuel pathways that can benefit communities, mitigate climate impacts, and drive business development. 

 

To advance this work in Minnesota, Fresh Energy, Friends of the Mississippi River, and The Nature Conservancy have released “Minnesota Sustainable Aviation Fuels Guiding Principles,” which provides a framework for the development, promotion, and use of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) that achieve climate, clean energy, ecological, and social, and environmental justice goals.

“Our vision is a world in which people and nature thrive. Sustainable aviation fuels have enormous promise. If we do this right, we can significantly reduce emissions, benefit communities across the state, and protect our lands and waters,” said Ann Mulholland, Director of The Nature Conservancy in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

 

The wide-scale adoption of lower-carbon fuel in the hard-to-electrify aviation industry would significantly cut greenhouse gasses from the largest source of emissions in the state, the transportation sector. SAF could also be leveraged to bolster Minnesota’s rural economies and provide additional revenue streams for farmers while simultaneously improving water and air quality — resulting in significant benefits for people, the environment, and Minnesota’s climate goals.

 

Fresh Energy, Friends of the Mississippi River, and The Nature Conservancy have released these Guiding Principles at a critical inflection point for SAF in Minnesota. Industry leaders are putting significant resources toward the rapid development of low-carbon aviation fuel, aiming to decarbonize flights while planning for massive business development in the coming decades. Meanwhile, state and federal policymakers are exploring new rules to incentivize this energy transition and usher in a new, lower-emissions era of aviation. The choices made now about Minnesota’s SAF marketplace will have an impact for decades to come.

 

The Guiding Principles represent core commitments to sustainability and equity that decision-makers must incorporate into the development of SAF in Minnesota. They include:

• Ensuring cropland emissions assumptions and reduction goals are rooted in science
• Defining “sustainable” to include air, water, biodiversity, and clean energy — not just a carbon intensity score
• Prioritizing and investing in sustainable aviation fuels that lean into regenerative agriculture including an emphasis on significantly lower-carbon, innovative feedstocks such as winter oilseeds, which also have huge benefits for water quality and biodiversity. 
• Leveraging SAF’s role in the energy transition to bolster rural communities while addressing the persistent environmental, economic and racial injustice and inequity in our agriculture and energy systems.

“Transportation, agriculture, and climate are intertwined. There’s both promise and peril in that,” said Trevor Russell, Friends of the Mississippi River’s Water Program Director. “A Minnesota SAF that hews to these guiding principles — including prioritizing winter oilseeds as a source for biofuel — will be a win for the environment and farmers. On the other hand, if SAF commitments incentivize practices that exacerbate our current land use and water quality challenges, it could ultimately make things worse.”

“To mitigate the worst impacts of climate change, we must decarbonize every sector of our economy. This includes even the more challenging areas, like aviation,” said Margaret Cherne-Hendrick, Senior Lead, Innovation and Impact, Fresh Energy. “By not taking a leadership role in developing Minnesota’s sustainable aviation fuels marketplace, Minnesota risks increasing emissions from aviation and undermining our state’s economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions goals.”

 

See the full Minnesota Sustainable Aviation Fuels Guiding Principles and learn the promise — and peril — of sustainable aviation fuel at bit.ly/MN-SAF.

 

About Fresh Energy: Fresh Energy is a Minnesota-based clean energy policy nonprofit working to speed the transition to a clean energy economy in Minnesota and the Midwest, which will ensure that our region enjoys good health, a vibrant economy, and thriving communities today and for generations to come. Visit www.fresh-energy.org for more.

 

About Friends of the Mississippi River: Friend of the Mississippi River is a nonprofit that engages people to protect, restore, and enhance the Mississippi River and its watershed in the Twin Cities region. To learn more, visit fmr.org or follow @friendsmissriv. FMR recently co-authored a landmark report on the economic, climate, and water-quality benefits of oilseeds and other crops developed by the University of Minnesota Forever Green Initiative. Learn more at fmr.org/clc-report-out.

 

About The Nature Conservancy: The Nature Conservancy is a global conservation organization dedicated to conserving the lands and waters on which all life depends. To learn more, visit nature.org or follow @nature_press on X.

Here's the 1 pager: Sustainable Aviation Fuels: How we can get it right

1-Pager MN Sustainable Aviation Fuels Guiding Principles - uploaded by Sally Jo Sorensen on Scribd

And here's the full version of the Minnesota Sustainable Aviation Fuels Guiding Principles Fresh Energy, Friends of the Mississippi River, and The Nature Conservancy July 2024:

Bluestem is looking forward to the public discussion of these principles in the larger discussion of SAF--and I'm curious what place they'll take, if any, in the often contentious multi-state conversation about ethanol carbon pipelines.

Drawing: The proposed aviation biofuel plant in South Dakota. Rendering courtesy of Gevo, via Dakota Scout.

Related posts

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• South Dakota Property Rights and Local Control Alliance turns in petitions to SD Secretary of State to force a vote on carbon pipeline policy
• New Midwest battles brew over CO2 pipelines
• Company behind proposed Lake Preston jet fuel plant buoyed by federal carbon credit ruling
• Ethanol carbon pipeline news digest: Gevo aviation fuel needs Summit Carbon Solutions and more!

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