GEVO’s Farm-to-Flight programme takes off with $30m USDA grant

US biofuel company, GEVO, have finalised and executed a Notice of Grant and Agreement award with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) for a Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities grant of up to $30m.

The programme aims to  track and quantify the carbon intensity (CI) of climate smart practises and incentivise the market for low CI corn to accelerate sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) production and low CI ethanol.

The programme will focus on Gevo’s Alcohol-to-Jet SAF refinery under  development  at Lake Preston, South Dakota. The hope is to encourage the expansion of field-tracked, low-CI corn production for the refinery. An  important aspect of the grand is to enrol female-owned farms in Southeast Iowa, southeast Nebraska and Native American tribal organisations in South Dakota.

Dr Patrick Gruber, CEO, Gevo said:  “When Net-Zero 1 and other production facilities come online, the feedstocks in the programme will be a key to the equation. This Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities grant will help ensure we count all the carbon through the entire business system and reward farmers for the good work they are doing.”

Gevo has created its own platform, Verity, which uses the Argonne National Laboratory GREET model to calculate the commodity carbon intensity scores on a field-by-field basis. This creates  financial-grade climate smart commodities carrying their performance through the supply chain to the final products.

Dr Paul Bloom, chief carbon officer, chief innovation officer and head of Verity, Gevo said: “Our Farm-to-Flight Program, under this USDA grant, aims to count all the carbon at the field level and reward farmers on a performance basis for delivering low-CI corn, as well as to accelerate the production of SAF to reduce dependency on fossil-based fuel. The programme will also focus on deploying our Verity Tracking platform with farmers to help them measure, report and verify their CI reductions.”

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