Purchase contracts hit $7 billion for renewable fuel from Riverbank’s old ammo plant
Aemetis Inc. announced Wednesday that it now has about $7 billion in purchase contracts for the renewable fuel it will make in Riverbank.
The Cupertino-based company is converting part of the former Army ammunition plant to produce jet and truck fuel from waste wood. The raw material will come from orchards and forests, yielding ethanol that will be blended with petroleum.
The operation, set to open in 2024, is part of the effort to reduce the carbon emissions involved in climate change. It also will help Central Valley farmers comply with a phaseout of open burning of discarded trees, and with wildfire fuel projects in the Sierra Nevada.
Aemetis already had announced that the project would supply airlines and truckers. Last week’s announcement was about hitting the $7 billion milestone via a contract with Cathay Pacific Airways, based in Hong Kong.
Nine other airlines inked earlier deals with Aemetis. A total of about 916 million gallons of fuel worth $3.8 billion will be trucked to the San Francisco and Los Angeles airports over seven to 10 years.
“Sustainable aviation fuel has a vital role in meeting aviation’s decarbonization targets, so we are pleased to complete another milestone in the drive toward SAF use at commercial scale,” said Eric McAfee, the founder, chairman and CEO of Aemetis, in a news release.
The other buyers are Delta Air Lines, Jet Blue Airlines, American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, British Airways, Finnair, Iberia, Japan Airlines and Qantas.
The fuel will be 60% ethanol and 40% petroleum. Aemetis said it will help airlines transition toward even lower-carbon sources in the long term.
Truck stops will get diesel
The rest of the $7 billion is for about 450 million gallons of renewable diesel to be sold through a major chain of travel centers, where truckers fuel up. The chain was not identified.
The Claus Road plant opened in 1942 to process aluminum for the World War II effort. It later shifted to ammunition but was phased out after the Cold War waned in the 1990s.
The city of Riverbank has acquired parts of the plant as they were cleansed of toxic waste. A few dozen companies have leased space in recent years.
Fuel from Keyes since 2011
Aemetis also has a Keyes plant that has produced ethanol from Midwestern corn since 2011. This year, it began supplying Pacific Gas & Electric Co. with methane collected from dairy farm manure, reducing its climate impact.
The company is seeking federal permits to drill deep wells for carbon dioxide storage under the Keyes and Riverbank sites. It proposes to use rock formations about 8,000 deep to hold C02 stripped out during the fuel production.
