Follow 10-inch A pipeline that stretches south of the international minneapolis airport – Paul, and after 13 miles you will find yourself in a potentially huge future center for sustainable aviation fuel in the middle west.
IN Agreement announced in SeptemberThe Pine Bend refinery belonging to Koch Industries in Rosemount, Minnesota would receive sustainable aviation fuel (SAF)-it is made using power raw materials, such as renewable or waste materials-they are killed in conventional jet fuel and sends the fuel mixture through the airport pipeline, the airport pipeline, where it will be used by Delta Airlines and other carriers.
Project supporters, including its financial supporters Deloitte and Bank of America, said last year that up to 60 million gallons of mixed fuel, potentially containing up to 50 percent SAF, will flow until 2025, and are aimed at producing 1 billion SAF gallows annually, which would exceed the demand at the airport in Minneapolis and would make the center A producer of additional airports throughout the country and potentially in the world. (The refinery has no time frame to hit this larger purpose).
But this project-and others like-willingness to support finance, such as tax breaks or loans, which were determined on the basis of the signature of the Biden administration in 2022, the inflation reduction act and which can be taken.
At the end of last month, Montana Renewables, one of the few American SAF producers – and the planned supplier of the first parties for Minnesota Hub – said that the first tranche with a value of $ 782 million from $ 1.67 billion loans from the Energy Department was “” tactical delay for the purpose Confirmation of adaptation to the priorities of the White House. “(Senator Montana Steve Daines said on February 11 that financing, which is included in the financing of the project, has been unknown since then.)
As Scott Irwin says, such federal incentives “for life” under the administration of Trump, a professor of agricultural and consumer economy at the University of Illinois. According to Irwin, Trump’s administration has yet shown that she is ready to completely dismantle the act on inflation reduction and its financing, even if it means that claurling promises farmers and companies that have already begun to implement climate work.
While state motivational programs together with low -emission fuel fuel standards continue to support SAF production, Irwin does not see who could enter to replace the federal government in a credit stack if the financing is withdrawn. “Without encouragement in the Act on the reduction of inflation, SAF does not live in water,” he says.
The mathematics refinery is no longer adding up
At the end of last year, Wired talked with Jake Reint, vice president of external matters at Flint Hills Resources, a company in Koch Industries, which owns Pine Bend and several other refinery, petrochemical plants and pipelines. (Flint Hills is a company that has concluded a contract with Delta and other corporate partners to use mixed fuel from Pine Bend.) Even before Donald Trump was chosen, Reint expressed challenges related to increasing the SAF industry.
According to the plan, Pine Bend will relieve SAF produced elsewhere from trucks served by Shell, a distributor in a system, and then connects it with the existing mixture of jet fuels. This will require Pine Bend to order specialized pumps, which, he claims, will not be delivered for a year-and they cannot be ordered until the exact planning process is completed, including precise estimates for short-term demand.