Boeing bets on Canadian green jet fuel technologies

Aircraft manufacturing giant Boeing has invested almost $17.5 million with a trio of Canadian sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) pioneers aiming to accelerate development of technologies that could help convert the country’s lumber waste and CO₂ emissions into low-carbon jet fuels.

Boeing will invest $10 million in a joint venture between Quebec companies Bioenergie AECN and Alder Renewables to advance a project that will turn sawmill by-products into biocrude for SAF, and $7.5 million in a pilot plant being built in BC by Dimensional Energy that can capture CO₂ directly from industrial facility emissions and transforms it into green synthetic fuel.

The volumes of SAF produced by the pilot projects will be relatively small: a total of 50 million gallons a year compared to the almost 100,000 million gallons currently burned annually by passenger airlines, according to Statista, a data portal. But the potential could be “very significant" if stepped-up to commercial levels, said Boeing Canada CEO Al Meinzinger, speaking to Canada’s National Observer.