Gevo has officially finalized and secured a federal grant agreement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for a grant of up to $30 million for Gevo’s Climate-Smart Farm-to-Flight Program. This program is aimed at tracking and quantifying the carbon-intensity impact of climate-smart practices while creating market incentives for low carbon-intensity (CI) corn to help accelerate production of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and low-CI ethanol.
With the leadership and support of the USDA, this grant will play a pivotal role in expediting the adoption of climate-smart farming practices and immediate market expansion of field-tracked, low-CI corn destined for SAF production in the area surrounding Gevo’s previously announced Net-Zero 1 SAF plant, currently under development in Lake Preston, South Dakota. The project will also accelerate the market adoption for climate-smart corn in close collaboration with Southwest Iowa Renewable Energy (SIRE), a dry-mill corn-based ethanol facility located near Council Bluffs, Iowa. This project specifically aims to enroll majority female-owned farms in southeast Iowa and southeast Nebraska and Native American tribal organizations in South Dakota, including the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, groups the USDA considers historically underserved.
“Our Farm-to-Flight Program aims to count all the carbon at the field level and reward farmers on a performance basis for delivering low-CI corn, as well as to accelerate the production of SAF to reduce dependency on fossil-based fuel. The program will focus on creating a market for carbon insets and sharing tools with farmers to help quantify the CI reductions.”
Dr. Paul Bloom, chief carbon officer and chief innovation officer for Gevo, Inc. and Head of Verity
For More Information on the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities, visit Gevo’s Dashboard page here.
Gevo believes that the Argonne National Laboratory GREET model is the best available standard of scientific-based measurement for life cycle inventory or LCI, and its subsidiary Verity uses the adaptability of GREET to measure CI and track it with immutable, blockchain-based distributed ledger technology. “Verity Tracking will give us the ability to assign carbon-intensity scores to feedstock on a field-by-field basis and carry those results through to the final biofuel products,” Bloom says. “This grant will help us apply the best science and reward growers for making a real difference to lower GHGs of biofuels.”
“When Net-Zero 1 and other production facilities come online, the feedstocks in the program will be a key to the equation. This Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities grant will help ensure we count all the carbon through the entire business system and reward farmers for the good work they are doing for their low-carbon harvest.”
Dr. Patrick Gruber, CEO of Gevo, Inc.
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For more information about Gevo’s Climate-Smart Commodities Program, email us here.
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This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, under agreement number NR233A750004G076.
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For more information visit the USDA Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities