
Renewable fuels development and integration company USA BioEnergy announced that it has secured 1,600+ acres of land in Eastern Texas to develop its $2.8bn refinery to produce sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) from wood waste.
USA BioEnergy launched a subsidiary Texas Renewable Fuels in 2022 to develop a facility to convert wood waste into transportation fuel including SAF, renewable diesel and renewable naphtha annually.
“This advanced-fuels facility development milestone underscores USA BioEnergy’s commitment to the future of aviation and energy security. It bolsters our goal of being the world’s leader in advanced fuels,” said Nick Andrews, CEO of USA BioEnergy.
The company’s planned $2.8bm greenfield facility in Bon Weir, Texas, is currently at in its design and engineering phase. Once completed, it will take the developers to complete construction of the biorefinery in around two years, followed by a six-to-eight-month commissioning period.
The state-of-the-art facility will annually convert 1m tons of forest thinning into 65m gallons of net-zero transportation fuel, including SAF and renewable naphtha.
The plant will capture and sequester over 50m metric tons of carbon dioxide over the biorefinery’s lifetime.
USA BioEnergy has already signed a 20-year offtake agreement with Southwest Airlines under which Southwest will have the option to purchase up to 680m gallons of neat – or unblended – SAF.
On the land acquisition, the company said the in the initial phase, it will developing 300 acres with option to expand production base further in the coming years.
The company said it hopes to receive support from state, county and federal credits and tax incentives totalling approximately $150m.
It is worth mentioning here that the USA BioEnergy subsidiary Texas Renewable Fuels, which is developing the Texas SAF facility, was invited by the US Department of Energy (DOE) Loan Programs Office (LPO) to submit a Part II application for a proposed $1.63bn loan guarantee under the Title XVII Innovative Clean Energy Loan Guarantee Program.