Sign up for CleanTechnica’s Weekly Substack for Zach and Scott’s in-depth analyses and high level summaries, sign up for our daily newsletter, and/or follow us on Google News!
Last Updated on: 16th May 2025, 02:18 pm
The sustainable aviation fuel industry has been all over the map in recent years, so it’s no surprise to see the field branch into the idea of combining green hydrogen with direct air carbon capture. Both fields have met with pushback as initial promises of a quick takeoff have bumped up against the harsh reality of lethargic offtake. However, the Swiss firm Metafuels is confident that SAF can make green H2 and captured CO2 play nicely together.
A Rocky Road For SAF From Biofuels
Metafuels also includes a role for biomass in its SAF production system. That can trigger some skepticism. Bio-based jet fuel has been kicking around the fringes since the early 2000’s without gaining much traction among offtakers.
New plant feedstocks could help kick the industry into gear. In the meantime, though, some industry leaders have been pulling back. In April, for example, Bloomberg reported that BP has hit the pause button on an SAF project at its refinery in Castellon, Spain, according to an anonymous source.
“The decision to pause the biofuels investment was taken due to weaker-than-expected growth in that market, the person said, asking not to be identified because the information is private,” Bloomberg observed.
A New Hope For SAF From E-Fuels
Leaving the direct plant-to-fuel pathway aside, SAF innovators like Metafuels have been heading off in the direction of e-fuels (electrofuels). Electrofuel systems deploy electricity, preferably from renewable resources, to push hydrogen gas from water, as an input for synthetic hydrocarbon liquid fuels.
Metaplant’s “aerobrew” SAF follows the same general outline. “Green H2 can be generated from water electrolysis driven by renewable electricity while CO2 can be removed from the atmosphere using direct air capture technology (DAC) or captured from other biogenic sources,” Metafuels explains.
“Alternatively, green H2 and carbon oxides can be generated from biomass gasification,” Metafuels adds. Its system is designed to switch between biobased green methanol and e-methanol, or do both at the same time, depending on market conditions.
Without giving away too many details (or any at all), the company also notes that it has validated a new high-performing, nanotech-based catalytic system to convert its green methanol to SAF.
“The result is a drop-in fuel that reduces life cycle emissions by up to 90% compared to conventional jet fuel, without requiring aircraft re-engineering or infrastructure changes,” Metafuels notes, emphasizing the all-important element of compatibility with existing jet fuel equipment and infrastructure.
Follow The Money To SAF
Aerobrew has already gained traction among investors and public funders. Metafuels describes itself as “one of Europe’s best-funded SAF startups,” with a total of $22 million in funding over the past two years, including a $5 million grant from the Swiss Federal Office of Energy.
Last year the company announced plans to launch its “Pizol” production facility in Denmark, and earlier today it announced plans for a second facility, named Turbe, to be located at the Port of Rotterdam.
The Rotterdam plant will launch at 12,000 liters of e-SAF daily, then step up to full volume at 120,000 liters (about 31,700 US gallons) with the support of the energy and chemicals storage firm Evos.
SAF Is Coming For Your Fossil Fuels
In today’s announcement, Metafuels advises that an FID (Final Investment Decision) on the Turbe facility will not happen until halfway through next year, after hitting the FEED (front-end engineering and design) milestone.
However, with the EU targeting the expansion of e-SAF in its decarbonization policy, Metafuels is confident that offtakers will materialize. “Policymakers are relying on a substantial increase in e-SAF capacity over the next decade, with the EU’s synthetic SAF sub-mandate set to begin at 1.2% from 2030 rising to 35% from 2050,” the company explains.
Metafuels is already looking ahead to additional opportunities for its all-in-one, scalable, integrated e-SAF facilities, and they are not the only innovator seeking to push fossil energy out of the aviation fuels market. The Port of Rotterdam also aims to host another major SAF facility under a partnership between the Dutch liquid fuels storage firm Advario and Power2X, another Dutch startup.
Power2X includes hydrogen produced from conventional fossil resources under its business umbrella, but the company is also zeroing in on the electrofuels market and that’s where the Port of Rotterdam expects it to land.
“The Power2X production facility will have the capacity to produce over 250,000 tonnes/year of e-SAF, a non-fossil, synthetic fuel made from green hydrogen,” the Port announced last October.
“It will be the largest e-SAF facility announced to-date, making sufficient ultra-low carbon fuel to fully power approximately 7,000 flights between Amsterdam and New York annually,” they added.
Instead of producing green methanol on site, the Power2X facility will import green methanol produced from green hydrogen. “Green methanol will be imported from locations where renewable energy and green hydrogen are abundant,” the Port emphasized.
On the carbon side, apparently, Power2X will deploy biogenic resources, rather than direct air capture. As of earlier this year, the project was still moving forward with the award of an engineering services contract.
Meanwhile, Here In The USA …
The news just keeps getting worse, worser, and worserer here in the US, as President Donald J. Trump rampages through the government, destroying invaluable public assets with the gleeful assistance of Tesla CEO Elon Musk while throwing one monkey wrench after another into the renewable energy transition.
Still, within the muck of Trump’s fossil-friendly “American Energy Dominance” policy is a carve-out for biomass, and individual US states are continuing to push the SAF envelope with supportive policies.
In March, for example, the leading e-fuels firm HIF Global announced that the California Air Resource Board has awarded approval on its e-fuels pathway under the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, the first such approval in the US.
“This LCFS certification underscores the growing demand for e-Fuels in the U.S. and globally, which could reach more than 250 mtpa by 20351, providing opportunity for over $1 trillion in potential capital investment in new facilities to produce the fuels,” stated HIF Global Board Executive Director Meg Gentle. In addition to e-SAF, the certification covers e-naptha and e-diesel.
HIF was one of the first e-fuels firms to surface on the CleanTechnica radar back in 2022, when it announced plans to produce e-fuels in Texas. The facility is still on track as of March.
If it falls through, no biggie. The US is not the only game in town. HIF already has an e-fuels facility up and running in Chile, and it also has commercial scale plans in the works for Uruguay and Australia in addition to the US.
Image (cropped): The Port of Rotterdam will host a new SAF facility that can use biomass feedstocks as well as green hydrogen from water and carbon from the air (courtesy of Port of Rotterdam).
Whether you have solar power or not, please complete our latest solar power survey.
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Sign up for our daily newsletter for 15 new cleantech stories a day. Or sign up for our weekly one on top stories of the week if daily is too frequent.
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.
CleanTechnica’s Comment Policy
