Sustainable aviation fuel is having a moment in Minnesota.
Lawmakers are considering a broad expansion of tax credits for producers of the fuels, in hope of positioning Minnesota as a leading manufacturer.
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency recently awarded a grant to the University of Minnesota to study a new oil-producing field crop that holds promise as a chief component of the fuel.
And last fall, a fuel company announced a $5 billion investment in a production facility in Moorhead that’s expected to go online in 2030.
Like other types of lower-carbon fuels, including corn ethanol, sustainable aviation fuel has attracted its share of critics concerned about slapping a “green” label on products and practices that continue to pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as well as farm pollutants into the ground and water.
But from an environmental perspective, air travel is a different, much dirtier beast than vehicle transit. It’s responsible for about 2.5% of total global carbon emissions. And the opportunity to shrink the carbon footprint of the airline industry has drawn support even from environmental groups that have been critical of the push for corn ethanol.
A comprehensive switch from traditional jet fuel to sustainable fuels could reduce total air transit emissions by 70% or more.
“Aviation is really hard to decarbonize,” said Trevor Russell, water program director of the Friends of the Mississippi River. “The best first thing we can do is bend the carbon intensity curve of the fuels we are currently using.”
The problem with ethanol
Ethanol derived from corn and other types of biomass has been promoted as a greener alternative to traditional fossil fuels, and over the past several decades state and federal lawmakers have enacted subsidies to support the farmers who grow the crops as well as the fuel companies mixing and refining the final product.
While the resulting fuel is less carbon-intensive than fossil gasoline, many researchers have argued that when you factor in the increased agricultural land use as well as the processing costs, it may actually produce even more carbon dioxide in the long run.
As a result, many advocates believe that it’s better to encourage a shift to fully-electric cars than to promote half-measures like ethanol.
The situation in aviation is different, however. Batteries are heavy, meaning there’s no realistic path to fully electric flight in the near term, especially not on longer routes. And air travel is incredibly carbon intensive, meaning that even modest changes to efficiency would yield major carbon benefits.
A half-measure like less carbon-intensive fuel, in other words, might be the best near-term option for the industry.
A better jet fuel
Sustainable aviation fuel boosters in Minnesota are particularly excited about using winter cover crops, like camelina and pennycress, as sources of biofuel. Planting them as cover crops on existing fields doesn’t require tilling additional land and would provide farmers with an additional revenue stream that doesn’t interrupt their regular crop rotations.
“They can share the same acres — they grow in the fall and are harvested in the spring,” Russell said. “You get all of the environmental benefits of cover crops, but producers can actually harvest and sell that cover crop as a sustainable aviation feedstock.”
Preliminary research suggests that camelina-based jet fuel could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 75%. But whether those gains could fully scale up to an industry-wide solution remains an open question. Hence, the need for tax credits.
In 2023, lawmakers passed a credit of $1.50 per gallon for producers and blenders of sustainable aviation fuel. In his 2025 budget, Gov. Tim Walz called for allocation of an additional $20 million toward the credits over the next decade. Lawmakers are currently negotiating final numbers in the ongoing budget discussions.
While support for sustainable aviation fuel is generally bipartisan, not everyone at the Capitol is sold on it. Rep. Rick Hansen, DFL-South St. Paul, said “the effort to expand tax credits for sustainable aviation fuel is greenwashing an existing production system that has serious environmental and community impacts.”
He added that “we should be prioritizing tax breaks for people, like renters and first time homebuyers, rather than corporations producing sustainable aviation fuel, which isn’t actually sustainable.”
Many skeptics of sustainable aviation fuel believe that boosters’ emission reduction estimates aren’t accurate, and that policymakers should emphasize alternative transit options like high-speed rail.
Advocates for the fuel, including Friends of the Mississippi River, the Nature Conservancy and Fresh Energy, have published a set of what they call “guiding principles” to ensure that any new fuels live up to their green promises. Those guidelines call for policies to measure lifecycle emissions properly; ensure no new cropland gets created; minimize impacts on water and air quality; and position winter cover crops like camelina, rather than corn or other sources of biomass, as the preferred feedstocks.
“There are some concerns with over-relying on summer annual or traditional biofuel feedstocks,” Russell said. “Those crops would be lower carbon but would not meet anyone’s definition of sustainable.”
Minnesota’s first camelina crops were planted in 2021, and producers plan to scale up to about 5,000 acres this year, according to the MPCA.
Advocates hope to push production up to 1 million acres by 2035.