Hawaiian Airlines to buy sustainable aviation fuel

Hawaiian Airlines announced Thursday that it has reached an agreement with biofuel company Gevo Inc. to buy 50 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, over five years. Gevo expects to supply the SAF from a facility to be constructed in the Midwest and begin deliveries to Hawaiian’s gateway cities in California starting in 2029.

“This offtake agreement gets us one step closer to achieving our goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050,” Hawaiian President and CEO Peter Ingram said. “We intend to continue to invest in SAF, which will be pivotal in reducing our impact on the environment.”

Gevo will produce SAF using residual starch from inedible field corn, grown using regenerative farming practices. The production process also will use renewable electricity and renewable natural gas, resulting in low-carbon fuels with substantially reduced carbon intensity (the level of greenhouse gas emissions compared with standard petroleum fossil-based fuels across their life cycle).

Gevo’s process is designed to maximize value and minimize waste by using the same acre of farmland to produce both animal feed and renewable fuels while sequestering atmospheric carbon through photosynthesis.