Follow the 10-inch Pipeline that extends south of Minneapolis – Saint Paul International Airport, and after 13 miles you are on a potentially large future hub for sustainable aviation fuel in the upper midwest.
In a deal that was announced in September, the Koch Industries-Ownership Pine Bend refinery in Rosemount, Minnesota, Durable Aviation Fuel (SAF) Felod would be received using non-planted food, such as renewable materials or waste send the fuel mix through the Pipeline to the airport, where it is used by Delta Airlines and other carriers.
The proponents of the project, including the financial backers Deloitte and Bank of America, said last year that up to 60 million gallons mixed fuel, with potential to 50 percent SAF, would flow by 2025, and they want to produce 1 billion Gallons from SAF per year , who would surpass the demand at Minneapolis airport and make the hub a producer for extra airports throughout the country and possibly the world. (There is no time frame for the refinery to hit this greater target.)
But this project and others think it is fun-dependent from financial support frameworks such as tax credits or loans set out under the Signature 2022 Climate legislation of the Biden, the Inflation Reduction Act, and that can now be removed.
At the end of last month, Montana Renewables, one of only a few American SAF producers – and the planned provider of the first batches for the Minnesota Hub – it was that the first $ 782 million tranche of a $ 1.67 billion loan from the ministry Energy underwent a “tactical delay to confirm the coordination with priorities of the White House.” (The US Senator Steve Daines of Montana said 11 February that the financing, which is processed in the financing of the project, has not since been followed.
Federal stimuli such as these are “on living” under the Trump government, says Scott Irwin, a professor of agricultural and consumer economics at the University of Illinois. According to Irwin, the Trump administration has so far demonstrated that it is willing to fully dismantle the inflation reduction law and its financing, even if this means that promises to farmers and companies who have already started implementing climate-smart work.
While the stimulation programs of the state, together with low-carbon fuel standards, still support the SAF production, Irwin does not see who can intervene to replace the federal government in the credit stack if the financing is withdrawn. “Without the stimuli in the Inflation Reduction Act, SAF is dead in the water,” he says.
The refinery -mathematics has not already been added
At the end of last year, Wired with Jake Reint, vice -president of external matters for Flint Hills Resources, the company within Koch Industries that owns Pine Bend and various other refineries, petrochemical factories and pipelines. (Flint Hills is the company that closed the deal with Delta and other business partners to use the mixed fuel of Pine Bend.) Even before Donald Trump was re -elected, Reint articated the challenges of increasing the SAF industry.
According to the plan, Pine Bend will discharge the SAF that is produced elsewhere, from trucks managed by Shell, the distributor in the setup, and then mixes it with his existing aircraft fuel mix. This requires Pine Bend to order specialist pumps that, according to Reint, says that a year will not be delivered-and they cannot be ordered until a thorough planning process is completed, including precise estimates for the short-term demand.
