United to Purchase 1.5B Gallons of Sustainable Aviation Fuel over 20 Years

  • Who is joining United Airlines in investing in SAF
  • a statement from the CEO of Alders Fuel

United Airlines and Honeywell announced yesterday a joint multimillion-dollar investment in Alder Fuels—a cleantech company that is pioneering first-of-its-kind technologies for producing sustainable aviation fuel at scale by converting abundant biomass, such as forest and crop waste, into sustainable low-carbon, drop-in replacement crude oil that can be used to produce aviation fuel. As part of the agreement, United is committing to purchase 1.5 billion gallons of SAF from Alder when produced to United’s requirements. United’s purchase agreement, which is one and a half times the size of the known purchase commitments of all global airlines combined, makes this easily the largest publicly announced SAF agreement in aviation history. United’s purchase agreement with Alder also surpasses the previous record set by the airline in 2015 through its investment in Fulcrum BioEnergy with its option to purchase up to 900 million gallons of SAF.

“Aviation poses one of the greatest technology challenges for addressing climate change and SAF has demonstrated the greatest potential. However, there is insufficient raw material to meet demand,” said Bryan Sherbacow, CEO of Alder Fuels and senior advisor to World Energy, the company that owns and operates the world’s first SAF refinery. “Alder’s technology revolutionizes SAF production by enabling use of widely available, low-cost and low-carbon feedstock. The industry is now a major step closer to using 100% SAF with our drop-in fuel that accelerates the global transition to a zero-carbon economy.”


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