Sustainable Aviation Fuel Plant Opens in Washington State

Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) developer Twelve has officially inaugurated its AirPlant One commercial SAF production facility in Moses Lake, Washington. Developed over the past three years in partnership with major investors including Alaska Airlines and Microsoft, it is the first commercial refinery in the U.S. to produce second-generation “eSAF,” using a feedstock of atmospheric carbon and electricity via the power-to-liquid pathway.

Twelve’s process captures CO2 from the air, combines it with water and renewable electricity, and converts that into hydrocarbon fuel molecules to produce SAF that meets ASTM International certification standards for jet fuel. Like all certified SAF, it requires no modifications to aircraft, engines, or existing airport infrastructure and can be freely mixed with conventional jet-A.

According to the company, the opening of the Washington plant—with its capacity of 50,000 gallons of SAF a year—demonstrates that American manufacturing can produce fuel by using abundant, onshore feedstocks, with no upstream extraction required. Its cost is anchored to long-term power contracts rather than commodity markets or OPEC decisions. And with supply and infrastructure to uplift SAF at Pacific Northwest airports constrained, the facility directly addresses that gap, producing fuel domestically for flights and reducing dependence on foreign fuel sources and the supply-chain disruptions that come with them.

“We broke ground on AirPlant One with a simple thesis: that the fuels powering the global economy could be made from renewable electricity and air, anywhere in the world,” said Nicholas Flanders, co-founder and CEO of Twelve. “Today, that thesis is operational, and Alaska Airlines will fly on fuel made right here in Washington State.”

The company plans for its next facilities—including one in Europe—to increase its output exponentially, to tens of millions of gallons annually, once built.