US Military Wants to Brew Jet Fuel From Thin Air

The US Air Force is making strides towards a sustainable future with its latest pilot project aimed at creating a decentralized supply chain for jet fuel. The project involves brewing jet fuel from the air itself, thereby reducing dependence on traditional fuel supply chains that are prone to accidents and attacks.

The Department of Defense has announced a $65 million contract with startup Air Company, which uses carbon dioxide pulled from the atmosphere to create fuel. Air Company won its spot in the program by winning a 2021 competition by fueling a drone with ready-made jet fuel as part of the Air Force’s Project FIERCE. The company hopes that the shipping-container-sized fuel factories will supplement, or even replace, the long, tenuous, and explosive supply chains that currently route fuel from wells through refineries, ports, and ultimately to bases.

While the new model fuels represent a controversial solution, the Air Force sees sustainable aviation fuels as a primary means of decarbonizing long-haul flights, which account for about 2.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. However, sustainable fuels also bring new supply chain and climate concerns. While Air Company hopes to ultimately produce its fuels from “direct air capture” by harvested atmospheric carbon dioxide, it currently depends on waste emissions from producing biodiesel.

The biodiesel industry itself and the EPA Renewable Fuel Standard that has supercharged it have probably increased global greenhouse gas emissions. Nonetheless, for major air carriers under pressure from investors about their climate plans, the current options are sustainable aviation fuel or grounding their airliners until battery-electric or hydrogen fuel cell breakthroughs make truly zero-carbon air travel possible.

The military, too, is under pressure to become more sustainable. It rolled out its own climate commitments last year, which included cutting greenhouse gases by 50 percent by 2030, making each base electrically self-sufficient by 2035, and making every base carbon-neutral by 2050.

Air Company’s fuels generators, which can be plugged into any electric source, are more beneficial to strategic resilience than effective climate solutions. Stafford Sheehan, Air Company Chief Technology Officer, said that the company’s trademark Air Made fuel would fill an essential niche in the military’s energetic toolkit. While the military has a wide range of means to generate electricity, they currently “don’t have any method of turning carbon dioxide, water, and that electricity into jet fuel,” Sheehan said.

Air Company hopes the Department of Defense pilot project will help it scale its operations to the point that it can offer fuels to air carriers. Their Brooklyn-based pilot plant “produces on the order of 10s of gallons per year,” Sheehan said. “We want to produce millions of gallons to fuel entire bases.”

In its journey to this partnership, Air Company helped pay the bills by selling non-fuel products, like its Air Made vodka, distilled (like its ethanol-based fuels) from carbon dioxide and water. The company also introduced a hand sanitizer made from captured carbon dioxide during the height of the 2020 shortages of that product.

The US military’s latest pilot project with Air Company is a significant step towards a more sustainable future. While there are still challenges in producing sustainable aviation fuel, the project represents a necessary innovation in reducing the carbon footprint of the aviation industry. As individuals, we can also make a difference by supporting companies that prioritize sustainability in their operations. Let us continue to push for more sustainable solutions, as every small effort towards reducing our carbon footprint counts.

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