Project Dragon: LanzaTech plans to produce sustainable aviation fuel in South Wales
LanzaTech is planning to build pioneering carbon recycling facilities in and around South Wales to convert industrial emissions into sustainable aviation fuel. ‘Project Dragon’ will reduce emissions from industry and help to deliver lower emission flying. Building on the area’s industrial strength, the facilities will enable South Wales to play a leading role in creating carbon reduction industries and high skilled jobs that are critical to delivering the UK’s net zero economy and tackling the climate emergency.
Following local consultation, we submitted a planning application for LanzaTech’s proposed ground breaking commercial scale Alcohol-to-Jet facility in Port Talbot to Neath Port Talbot Council (Planning Reference: P2023/0858). This would convert sustainably sourced ethanol, via the LanzaJet™ Alcohol-to-Jet Process, into sustainable aviation fuel that will replace 1% of the fossil fuels used in planes in the UK today. The facility received a unanimous vote for approval by Neath Port Talbot Council’s Planning Committee in March 2024.
Separately, LanzaTech is now planning to build a pioneering carbon recycling facility on a brownfield, industrial site at the former Gulf Oil Refinery, Waterston, Milford Haven. Find out more about the proposals at the link below.
About LanzaTech
LanzaTech is a Chicago, USA headquartered company with around 400 staff globally. Project Dragon is being delivered by its UK business, LanzaTech UK Ltd, and UK-based consultants. Its unique carbon transformation and recycling technology is like retrofitting a brewery onto an emission source like a steel mill or a landfill site, but instead of using sugars and yeast to make alcohol, waste carbon is converted by bacteria to ethanol, which can then be converted to Sustainable Aviation fuel and/or chemicals. Imagine a day when your aeroplane is powered by fuel that would otherwise have been pollution, when your shampoo bottle or t-shirt would have started life as emissions from a steel mill. This future is possible today using LanzaTech technology. Further information about the remarkable 18 year journey of LanzaTech from a small laboratory in New Zealand to a pioneering biotechnology company is available here.
The need for Project Dragon
We face a climate emergency. To try to limit the effects of climate change, the UK and Welsh governments have set legally-binding targets to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
The aviation industry is one of the toughest sectors in which to reduce emissions. In order to tackle this, the Government will require the use of sustainable aviation fuel from 2025. The fossil fuels used today to make aviation fuels can be replaced by recycling waste carbon, such as from industrial sites, to make a sustainable aviation fuel.
The use of sustainable aviation fuel will reduce the climate impact of greenhouse gas emissions by more than 70% when compared with conventional fossil jet fuel. Sustainable aviation fuel also contains much lower levels of aromatic compounds than fossil jet fuel producing a much cleaner burn and causing far fewer soot particles and contrails that also heat the atmosphere.
Sustainable aviation fuel can be used today without changes to existing aircraft engines (in blends of up to 50% alongside standard jet fuel), making it an immediate solution for the aviation industry.
The story so far
The UK Government requires by 2030 that 10% of the jet fuel used in UK aviation will be sustainable aviation fuel.
To accelerate this key project, LanzaTech has secured £25 million of funding from the Department for Transport’s Advanced Fuels Fund, highlighting that this is a critically important project to meet the UK’s climate goals.
What's happened so far?
The first stage of Project Dragon is to create an Alcohol-to-Jet facility in Port Talbot. This facility would transform sustainably sourced ethanol into sustainable aviation fuel.
The proposed plant would generate over 150 jobs and make a significant contribution towards delivering the UK’s net zero economy, with Port Talbot playing a leading role in creating new carbon reduction industries.
The engineering designs for the facility have been informed by technical requirements and following discussions with Neath Port Talbot Council, Natural Resources Wales, Welsh Government and Associated British Ports (ABP).
Following local consultation, LanzaTech submitted a planning application to Neath Port Talbot Council in November 2023. The facility received a unanimous vote for approval by Neath Port Talbot Council’s Planning Committee in March 2024.
What's being proposed now?
A separate facility is now being proposed in Milford Haven, which will take the waste gases from industrial processes and transform these into ethanol through LanzaTech’s innovative gas fermentation technology. LanzaTech has patented this technology, which uses microorganisms (bacteria) to create ethanol which can be used to supply the Alcohol-to-Jet facility.
Sustainably sourced ethanol will be used to supply the Alcohol-to-Jet facility until the gas fermentation facility is in place.
Once the Alcohol-to-Jet facility and the gas fermentation facilities have been developed, LanzaTech will be making sustainable aviation fuel from the waste gases of local industrial sites. Some industries, like steel making, will always need to use some carbon as it is embedded in the steel. LanzaTech can continue to capture and reuse this carbon reducing the need for fossil fuels.
In the future as industries are progressively decarbonised, LanzaTech plan to switch to using other sources of carbon in its processes such as from agricultural waste. Eventually, it is envisaged that carbon will even be taken directly from the air to make aviation fuels, plastics and chemicals in a perfectly circular carbon economy.
