Using forests and farms to make jet fuel?

It’s an idea that state lawmakers, the aviation industry, and private and public shareholders are talking about.

“Delta has made a commitment to get to net zero by 2050,” declares Jeff Davidman, Vice President of State and Local Government Affairs for the airline. “As we look to our own carbon footprint, 90% of what occurs happens in the air.”

The Atlanta-based carrier, the non-profit Greater MSP Partnership, and others, briefed lawmakers Monday on Sustainable Aviation Fuel, also known as SAF — that comes from non-fossil fuel sources.

It’s all part of an effort to reduce the travel industry’s carbon footprint.

“Solving the airline challenge in climate change, decarbonizing air travel is really hard,” says Peter Frosch, CEO of the MSP Partnership. “You can make jet fuel out of so many things. Agriculture waste, wood waste, biogas from animal agriculture, corn, and soybeans.”

Experts say SAF is made through a chemical process that uses enzymes to speed up the natural fermentation of wood or ag waste sugars.

It’s almost like a digestion process that breaks down the materials into their component parts.

The resulting alcohol is then converted into jet fuel.

“Mills often have waste material that they have to get rid of, bark, sawdust, things like that,” Rick Horton, Executive Vice President of Minnesota Forest Industries, a trade group, explains. “It takes the wood and gasifies it and turns the gas into liquid.”

Supporters of the process say it cuts carbon emissions from regular jet fuel by 90%.

Already, Washington D.C.-based DG Fuels is planning to build a $5 billion facility in Moorhead, with the goal of producing 193 million gallons of SAF a year, using ag and wood waste as feedstock.

A release by the company says that amount represents nearly half the fuel used at MSP airport.

“Minnesota, if you look at it, has the entire value chain, from growing the feedstocks, to producing the fuel, to a hub airport that wants to be able to use it,” Davidman notes. “It actually works with the infrastructure that we already have at the airport, with the pipeline that brings jet fuel to the airfield, the fuel tanks we have at MSP, and all the way into the plane.”

DG Fuels says the Moorhead plant would generate 650 jobs and have an economic impact of $50 million.

Still, there are some wrinkles.

Davidman says SAF costs two to five times more than conventional jet fuel — and that the process will likely need government funding to make it economically sustainable.

In 2024, he says just over 300 million gallons were made — and Delta alone used about 12 million gallons.

But Davidman says that’s just a tiny fraction of the amount needed to reach the airline’s goal of net-zero emissions.

He says Minnesota did pass a tax credit that will help, but that there aren’t many facilities making SAF right now.

Davidman says the goal is to get to three billion gallons in the next five years.

“The problem we have with sustainable aviation fuel is there’s just not much in the world today that’s being produced,” he notes. “The U.S. airlines have made a commitment that by 2030, we want to replace ten percent of our conventional jet fuel used with sustainable aviation fuel.”

Part of Delta’s idea is to use a half-and-half mix of SAF and conventional fuel, at least for the short term.

Meanwhile — DG Fuels says it hopes to have shovels in the ground in Moorhead by the end of the third quarter of 2026, with the plant up and running by the end of 2030.

“The best lever we have to reduce our carbon footprint is sustainable aviation fuel,” Davidman says. “And it’s a lever we know works in our planes today.”

“It’s good for us as a species to help prevent climate change,” Horton adds. “It’s good for the forest; it’s good for the economy.”