Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Climate Tech

United Airlines Bets on Heirloom’s Direct Air Capture

The airline is making an investment with an eye toward one day producing jet fuel from the captured carbon.

An airplane and carbon capture.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Like so many other businesses in the aviation sector, United Airlines is largely banking on sustainable aviation fuel to power its transition to net-zero emissions. Now the company’s VC arm, United Airlines Ventures, is taking a bet on direct air capture to help produce this fuel using carbon extracted straight from the atmosphere. Today, UAV’s Sustainable Flight Fund announced an equity investment in legacy DAC player Heirloom. This builds on Heirloom’s recent $150 million Series B funding round and will allow the fund to purchase up to 500,000 tons of CO2 removal from Heirloom, either to produce sustainable fuel or to sequester permanently underground. (The two companies didn’t disclose the size of the latest investment.)

Right now, producing green jet fuel — whether via biomass or captured carbon — is much more expensive than producing jet fuel the standard way, by refining crude oil. And making sustainable fuel using direct air capture, which usually costs upwards of $600 per ton of CO2 removed, would likely be the most costly method possible. DAC-based SAF might not make economic sense for a decade or more, which is why the fund is waiting to see where the carbon removal market goes in the coming years before finalizing its carbon removal purchase.

While there are well over 100 direct air capture companies at this point, UAV’s managing director, Andrew Chang, told me that United took a bet on Heirloom because the company has secured contracts with major buyers such as Microsoft and Frontier. It also has a flexible business model that allows it to either sequester carbon underground or use it as an input to make valuable end products such as SAF.

“They've demonstrated an early ability to go out and get some of these paying customers for that CO2 offtake,” Chang said. “They have a working pilot plant out in California that we visited, and they're planning to do their next scale-up facility in the Gulf Coast region, probably. So there's a lot of tangible points that the company has demonstrated.”

While the Heirloom investment represents United’s first foray into direct air capture, it isn’t the airline’s first rodeo when it comes to carbon removal. The Sustainable Flight Fund, which launched in 2023, has also invested in Svante, which makes filters and machines for carbon capture, and Banyu Carbon, which seeks to remove excess CO2 from the ocean. Altogether, the fund totals over $200 million in investments, about a third of which comes from United itself and the rest from its corporate partners, which include Air Canada, JetBlue Ventures, Google, and Bank of America. This means that Heirloom’s carbon removal credits wouldn’t accrue specifically to United, but rather to the fund itself.

“We're not smart enough to know what the silver bullet is,” Chang told me of the fund’s diversified approach to sustainable fuel investments. UAV has also backed hydrogen companies, an algae-based biofuel company, and companies making fuel using cooking oil, fats and grease. “I actually don't think there is a silver bullet. I think you need to run as hard as you can across all possible alternatives.”

Right now, only about 0.1% of United’s fuel is sustainably made. In order for the airline to reach its 2035 goal of decreasing carbon intensity by 50%, that number needs to ramp astronomically in the coming decade. And that also has to happen without raising the cost of flights for consumers, which Chang told me is simply not an option.

“You have higher prices, people are going to fly less, or we're going to go out of business,” Chang said. As he’s been told, United will not pay a premium for SAF. Thus, this fuel must be subsidized by other players, which can include large corporate customers eager to address emissions from their employees’ business travel or fuel companies that produce SAF simply as a byproduct.

“People are chasing higher value, higher volume products — gasoline, diesel, naphtha,” a petroleum-derived liquid used as a feedstock for fuels and petrochemicals — “what have you. No one optimizes for jet,” Chang explained. He doesn’t think producing SAF alone is a viable business model, which is why he views Heirloom’s multiple potential revenue streams as an attractive option for UAV’s portfolio. As he told me, “The best way for you to have a chance to execute on SAF commercialization and production is to not focus on that exclusively.”

Green

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Energy

The New Campaign to Save Renewables: Lower Electricity Bills

Defenders of the Inflation Reduction Act have hit on what they hope will be a persuasive argument for why it should stay.

A leaf and a quarter.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

With the fate of the Inflation Reduction Act and its tax credits for building and producing clean energy hanging in the balance, the law’s supporters have increasingly turned to dollars-and-cents arguments in favor of its preservation. Since the election, industry and research groups have put out a handful of reports making the broad argument that in addition to higher greenhouse gas emissions, taking away these tax credits would mean higher electricity bills.

The American Clean Power Association put out a report in December, authored by the consulting firm ICF, arguing that “energy tax credits will drive $1.9 trillion in growth, creating 13.7 million jobs and delivering 4x return on investment.”

Keep reading...Show less
Green
Politics

AM Briefing: A Letter from EPA Staff

On environmental justice grants, melting glaciers, and Amazon’s carbon credits

EPA Workers Wrote an Anonymous Letter to America
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Severe thunderstorms are expected across the Mississippi Valley this weekend • Storm Martinho pushed Portugal’s wind power generation to “historic maximums” • It’s 62 degrees Fahrenheit, cloudy, and very quiet at Heathrow Airport outside London, where a large fire at an electricity substation forced the international travel hub to close.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Trump issues executive order to expand critical mineral output

President Trump invoked emergency powers Thursday to expand production of critical minerals and reduce the nation’s reliance on other countries. The executive order relies on the Defense Production Act, which “grants the president powers to ensure the nation’s defense by expanding and expediting the supply of materials and services from the domestic industrial base.”

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Electric Vehicles

These States Are Still Pushing Public EV Charging Programs

If you live in Illinois or Massachusetts, you may yet get your robust electric vehicle infrastructure.

EV charging.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Robust incentive programs to build out electric vehicle charging stations are alive and well — in Illinois, at least. ComEd, a utility provider for the Chicago area, is pushing forward with $100 million worth of rebates to spur the installation of EV chargers in homes, businesses, and public locations around the Windy City. The program follows up a similar $87 million investment a year ago.

Federal dollars, once the most visible source of financial incentives for EVs and EV infrastructure, are critically endangered. Automakers and EV shoppers fear the Trump administration will attack tax credits for purchasing or leasing EVs. Executive orders have already suspended the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program, a.k.a. NEVI, which was set up to funnel money to states to build chargers along heavily trafficked corridors. With federal support frozen, it’s increasingly up to the automakers, utilities, and the states — the ones with EV-friendly regimes, at least — to pick up the slack.

Keep reading...Show less
Green