Southwest Airlines Announces Launch of Southwest Airlines Renewable Ventures and $30 Million Investment in LanzaJet

(Chicago, Illinois) Southwest Airlines Co. today announced the launch of Southwest Airlines Renewable Ventures (SARV), a wholly-owned subsidiary dedicated to creating more opportunities for Southwest to obtain scalable sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), as well as a $30 million investment in sustainable fuels technology company and producer LanzaJet, Inc.

Photo of a Southwest Airlines aircraft in flight courtesy of Southwest.

Southwest aims to replace 10% of its total jet fuel consumption with SAF by 2030, according to today’s press release from the company.

"Our launch of SARV and our investment in LanzaJet demonstrate that we are not sitting on the sidelines," said Bob Jordan, President & CEO of Southwest Airlines. "Rather, we're in the game by taking proactive, disciplined steps toward securing affordable SAF for Southwest, as we continue to march toward our goal of net zero by 2050. We look forward to working with companies and organizations developing important technology, like LanzaJet, which could help us meet our SAF goals."

As part of their agreement, LanzaJet and Southwest intend to work toward the development of a sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production facility and collaborate to advance the operations of an ethanol-from-corn-stover-to-SAF technology company in which Southwest is invested: SAFFiRE Renewables, LLC.

Last month, LanzaJet unveiled the world’s first ethanol-to-SAF production facility in Soperton, Georgia.

Tom Nealon, a former president of and current senior advisor to Southwest, is both President of SARV and the Chief Executive Officer of SAFFiRE. SaFFiRE’s investors include D3Max LLC and Southwest, and its industry partners are the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

"SARV's goal is to help scale SAF through strategic investments, better positioning Southwest to have access to high quality, affordable SAF in accordance with the robust standards of Southwest's SAF policy," Nealon said in today's press release from Southwest. "Through SARV's investment in LanzaJet, we're also entering the next phase in the commercialization of SAFFiRE technology, which is designed to support the production of cellulosic ethanol that can be converted to SAF."

The U.S. facility to be developed by LanzaJet is intended to enable the opportunity to convert SAFFiRE’s cellulosic ethanol into SAF.

“The U.S. is an incredibly important market for us – it’s our home, where our technology originated and scaled, the site of our and the world’s first commercial ethanol-to-SAF plant, and an important opportunity to support the existing U.S. biofuels and ethanol industries with our leading ethanol-to-SAF technology,” said LanzaJet’s Chief Executive Officer Jimmy Samartzis.  “The alignment of Southwest and LanzaJet is a powerful combination that has the potential to integrate the SAF value chain and to double-down on the US ethanol, aviation, and biofuel industries.”

Recently, in November of 2023, Southwest announced a two-decade agreement to buy as much as 680 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuel from Arizona-based USA BioEnergy LLC starting as early as 2028. Per USA BioEnergy’s Chief Executive Officer, Nick Andrews, USA BioEnergy is working to build a $2 billion-plus plant in Texas to make green jet fuel from wood waste, according to Bloomberg.