This New Factory Just Commercialized Jet Fuel Made From CO2

A New Era for Aviation: Turning CO2 Into Jet Fuel Is Now a Commercial Reality

For decades, the aviation industry has been one of the most difficult sectors to decarbonize. Planes burn enormous volumes of fossil-based jet fuel, and no battery technology is anywhere near ready to power a commercial airliner across the Atlantic. But a landmark development out of Washington State may have just changed the conversation in a profound way. A startup called Twelve has officially opened a commercial-scale facility that takes carbon dioxide — a greenhouse gas — and transforms it into fully certified, drop-in jet fuel. The era of CO2-derived sustainable aviation fuel has officially begun.

What Is AirPlant One and Where Is It Located?

The facility is called AirPlant One, and it sits near farm fields in Washington State, a region increasingly associated with clean energy innovation. Twelve, the company behind the plant, has spent more than a decade developing and refining the underlying technology needed to convert CO2 into commercially viable products. AirPlant One represents the culmination of that work — the point at which laboratory science becomes an operating factory delivering real fuel to real airlines.

According to Twelve CEO and cofounder Nicolas Flanders, the process is elegantly straightforward in concept, even if the engineering behind it is deeply complex. "You have a CO2 molecule going in at one end of the plant, and it is getting transformed into on-spec jet fuel on the other side," Flanders explained. That on-spec designation matters enormously — it means the fuel meets the technical specifications required for use in commercial aircraft without any modification to existing engines or infrastructure.

How Does the CO2-to-Jet-Fuel Process Actually Work?

The process Twelve has developed is a sophisticated multi-stage conversion system powered by renewable electricity. Here is how the transformation unfolds from start to finish:

• CO2 capture: The process begins with a large tank of carbon dioxide. Crucially, this CO2 is sourced from pollution captured at an ethanol production plant, meaning the carbon was already headed for the atmosphere and is being intercepted and put to productive use instead.
• Electrochemical conversion to syngas: The captured CO2 is fed into Twelve's proprietary electrochemical reactor system, which uses renewable electricity to convert the CO2 molecules into syngas — a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. This step is the core of Twelve's patented technology and is what sets the company apart from other sustainable fuel approaches.
• Synthetic crude production: The syngas is then processed further and transformed into synthetic crude oil — a hydrocarbon-based intermediate product with chemical properties similar to petroleum-derived crude.
• Refining into E-Jet fuel: Finally, the synthetic crude is refined into the finished product that Twelve markets under the brand name E-Jet sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). The result is a product chemically compatible with existing aircraft turbines and airport fueling infrastructure.

What makes this particularly noteworthy from an environmental standpoint is the energy source powering the conversion. By using renewable electricity rather than fossil energy to drive the electrochemical reactions, Twelve significantly reduces the carbon intensity of the entire production process. The combination of captured CO2 as feedstock and clean power as the energy input is what allows the company to claim meaningful lifecycle emissions reductions compared to conventional jet fuel.

Why Sustainable Aviation Fuel Matters Right Now

Aviation accounts for roughly 2 to 3 percent of global CO2 emissions, a figure that sounds modest until you consider that those emissions occur at altitude, where their warming effect is amplified. When non-CO2 effects — such as contrail formation and nitrogen oxide emissions — are included, aviation's contribution to climate change may be two to four times larger than the CO2 figure alone suggests.

Sustainable aviation fuel has long been identified as the most realistic near-term pathway to reducing aviation's footprint. Unlike electric or hydrogen propulsion systems that would require fundamental redesigns of aircraft and airport infrastructure, SAF can be blended with conventional jet fuel and used in existing planes today. The challenge has always been supply — SAF production has historically been expensive, limited in scale, and reliant on feedstocks like used cooking oil or agricultural waste that face real-world supply constraints.

Twelve's approach sidesteps many of those feedstock limitations entirely. CO2, unfortunately, is not in short supply. By using carbon emissions as the primary raw material, the company opens up a theoretically vast and scalable supply of fuel feedstock that doesn't compete with food production or require massive land use changes.

Commercial Flights Could Begin Using E-Jet Fuel Within Weeks

Perhaps the most striking detail about AirPlant One's launch is just how quickly the fuel it produces may reach passengers. Reports indicate that commercial flights could begin using E-Jet sustainable aviation fuel as soon as later in the month of the plant's opening. That rapid transition from ribbon-cutting to actual aircraft operation underscores just how ready the technology and the supply chain are to begin operating at scale.

This is not a pilot program or a demonstration flight. This is the beginning of routine commercial use of a fuel made from CO2 — a milestone that seemed distant just a few years ago.

The Bigger Picture: What Twelve's Success Signals for the Industry

Twelve is not the only company working on power-to-liquid or CO2-to-fuel technologies, but it is among the furthest along in commercialization. The opening of AirPlant One sends a clear signal to the broader energy and aviation sectors: this technology works, it can be built at meaningful scale, and it can produce fuel that meets the rigorous standards demanded by commercial aviation regulators and airlines alike.

For airlines under increasing pressure from regulators, investors, and passengers to reduce their environmental impact, the availability of a scalable, infrastructure-compatible SAF made from waste CO2 is significant news. The European Union's ReFuelEU Aviation regulation, for example, mandates that SAF make up a growing share of aviation fuel at EU airports — a target that will be nearly impossible to meet with today's limited SAF supply. Facilities like AirPlant One represent exactly the kind of production capacity the industry needs to meet those obligations.

Challenges Still Ahead

Despite the excitement surrounding AirPlant One's launch, important challenges remain. The cost of CO2-derived SAF is currently higher than conventional jet fuel, and bringing that cost down will require continued investment, further technological refinement, and supportive policy frameworks. Scaling from one commercial plant to the hundreds that would be needed to make a meaningful dent in global aviation emissions will take years and enormous capital.

There are also questions around the renewable electricity supply needed to power the conversion process at massive scale. The climate benefit of E-Jet fuel depends directly on the cleanliness of the electricity used in production. As grids become greener and dedicated renewable energy installations are paired with production facilities, that picture will improve — but it is a dependency worth tracking carefully.

Conclusion: A Milestone Worth Celebrating — and Scaling

The opening of AirPlant One is a genuine milestone in the long journey toward sustainable aviation. By demonstrating that CO2 can be commercially converted into certified jet fuel at scale using renewable electricity, Twelve has moved an important climate technology from the realm of promising ideas into the world of operating infrastructure. As commercial flights begin to fill their tanks with E-Jet fuel in the coming weeks, a new chapter in aviation history quietly begins — one where the carbon that once warmed the planet is instead helping to power the aircraft that cross it.