Twelve Opens America's First Commercial E-Jet Fuel Plant in Washington State

Twelve has opened AirPlant One in Moses Lake, Washington, the first commercial-scale facility in the United States to produce E-Jet fuel, a power-to-liquid sustainable aviation fuel made from carbon dioxide, renewable electricity and water, with Alaska Airlines and Microsoft joining the ribbon cutting to mark the beginning of commercial-scale production. The facility produces ASTM-certified jet fuel that is chemically identical to conventional fuel and requires no modifications to aircraft, engines or existing airport infrastructure, with Alaska Airlines committed to operating regular domestic flights using E-Jet SAF manufactured at the site. AirPlant One also produces E-Naphtha, a versatile eChemical derived from the same inputs that serves as a foundational building block for thousands of everyday products from plastics and packaging to solvents and synthetic fibres.

 

The Power-to-Liquid Advantage Over Biofuel Pathways

 

E-Jet fuel represents a fundamentally different category from bio-based SAF because it is produced from carbon dioxide and renewable electricity rather than agricultural feedstocks with inherent land and supply constraints. Twelve's eManufacturing process takes captured carbon dioxide, combines it with water and renewable electricity and converts those inputs into hydrocarbon fuel molecules using electrolyzers, delivering up to 90 percent lower lifecycle carbon dioxide emissions compared to conventional jet fuel. Nicholas Flanders, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Twelve, said the company broke ground on AirPlant One with a simple thesis that fuels powering the global economy could be made from renewable electricity and air anywhere in the world, and that today that thesis is operational with Alaska Airlines flying on fuel made in Washington State.

The power-to-liquid model offers a structural commercial advantage that biofuel pathways cannot match: fixed-price, long-term fuel contracts anchored to power purchase agreements rather than crude oil commodity markets. Because E-Jet fuel costs are determined by electricity contracts rather than OPEC pricing decisions or agricultural commodity cycles, Twelve can offer airlines price predictability across a decade-long horizon, providing a structural shift in fuel cost management for carriers running billion-dollar fuel budgets. This price predictability dimension, combined with the energy security benefits of producing fuel from domestically available inputs rather than imported crude, positions E-Jet as a commercially compelling proposition beyond its environmental credentials.

 

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The Alaska Airlines and Microsoft Partnership

 

Alaska Airlines' 2022 commitment to purchase output from Twelve's facility, made jointly with Microsoft, was foundational to AirPlant One achieving financial close and proceeding to construction, demonstrating how early offtake commitments from creditworthy counterparties can unlock capital for first-of-kind industrial facilities that would otherwise struggle to secure project financing. Alaska Star Ventures also participated in Twelve's $645 million funding round as an investor, deepening a partnership spanning procurement, capital and flight operations. Ryan Spies, Alaska Airlines Managing Director of Sustainability, said the partnership with Twelve and Microsoft demonstrates the power of innovation and collaboration to advance SAF while creating jobs, diversifying fuel supply chains and strengthening energy security.

Microsoft supported the scale-up of AirPlant One through a strategic investment from its Climate Innovation Fund and a SAF offtake agreement using a book-and-claim accounting model pioneered alongside Alaska Airlines, allowing Microsoft to reduce its reported emissions associated with business travel. Melanie Nakagawa, Corporate Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer at Microsoft, said climate progress depends on collaborations that send signals to investors and innovators to move markets and that the investment in Twelve helps scale energy solutions while laying the groundwork for cleaner aviation at a global scale. The three-way partnership between an industrial technology company, an airline and a technology corporation provides a commercial template for how power-to-liquid SAF facilities can be financed and offtaken in the current market environment.

 

E-Naphtha and the eChemicals Opportunity

 

Beyond aviation fuel, AirPlant One's E-Naphtha production opens a second revenue stream and a potential new industrial category that Twelve is calling eChemicals, enabling manufacturers to source the building blocks of their products from domestic electricity and captured carbon dioxide rather than petrochemical feedstocks. Twelve has already delivered proof-of-concept projects to global manufacturers including Mercedes-Benz for interior automotive components from carbon dioxide-based polymers, PANGAIA for carbon dioxide-made polycarbonate sunglass lenses and Procter and Gamble for carbon dioxide-based ingredients in Tide laundry detergent. A Twelve consumer survey found that 74 percent of US consumers would choose a carbon dioxide-based product over a conventional oil-derived product if quality is equal, with consumer interest strongest in apparel, accessories and footwear at 67 percent followed by technology and personal electronics at 57 percent.

The E-Naphtha market opportunity addresses a structural limitation of biofuel-based SAF approaches, which can decarbonise aviation fuel but cannot easily provide the chemical building blocks needed to decarbonise the thousands of everyday products derived from petrochemical naphtha. A facility that simultaneously produces certified aviation fuel and a drop-in petrochemical substitute from the same renewable inputs creates a dual-market business model that improves the economics of power-to-liquid production relative to aviation-only facilities. The upstream, drop-in nature of E-Naphtha means that manufacturers can integrate it into existing production processes without capital investment in new equipment or process redesign, reducing the adoption barrier relative to other industrial decarbonisation pathways.

 

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Outlook for Commercial Power-to-Liquid Production

 

AirPlant One's commercial opening establishes that power-to-liquid fuel production is commercially viable in the United States today, providing the operational validation that investors, policymakers and potential offtakers have been waiting for before committing to the next generation of facilities at larger scale. The commissioning of a single commercial facility is a critical milestone, but the gap between AirPlant One's current production capacity and the volumes needed to make a material contribution to aviation's net-zero trajectory is substantial, requiring the replication and scaling of the facility design across multiple additional production sites. Twelve's technology is designed to scale to additional production sites, airline partners and chemical products, with AirPlant One serving as the reference facility for subsequent commercial deployments.

The international regulatory environment is creating structural demand that reinforces the commercial case for power-to-liquid investment, with European SAF mandates providing a guaranteed demand floor and Singapore's requirement for SAF to be physically loaded at Changi Airport creating location-specific demand that cannot be satisfied through book-and-claim accounting alone. The geographic flexibility of power-to-liquid production, which can be sited wherever renewable electricity and carbon dioxide sources are available rather than near specific geological or agricultural resources, positions Twelve's approach as particularly well suited to serving these location-specific demand requirements. The convergence of commercial validation from AirPlant One, growing regulatory SAF mandates and the structural price predictability advantage of electricity-anchored fuel costs creates conditions in which power-to-liquid SAF can attract increasing institutional capital for the next generation of commercial facilities.

 

Source: Twelve