The airline industry's dirty secret: Clean jet fuel failures

Boston-based World Energy was one of the first companies in the world to produce commercial quantities of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), a type of renewable fuel made from sources such as used cooking oil, agricultural residues and other waste.

Its Paramount refinery near downtown Los Angeles had been a rare success story, supplying millions of gallons of SAF a year to airlines such as United Airlines and fellow U.S. carrier JetBlue Airways. The plant, which began operations in 2016, was central to the carriers’ pledges to help the airline industry switch to a blend of 10% SAF by the end of this decade.

But the refinery quietly ceased operations in April. And World Energy’s plans for a second plant in Houston have stalled amid a lack of commitment from the industry, according to Chief Executive Gene Gebolys.

World Energy’s struggles mirror the plight of dozens of clean fuel startups, according to a Reuters review of the sector. Nearly 20 years after the first commercial flight powered partly by biofuels made the short hop from London to Amsterdam, Reuters found that the airline industry’s plans to go green before regulators start penalising them are little more than a pipe dream.