Last updated on 2024-01-15
Just a couple weeks ago, Virgin Atlantic staged a trans-Atlantic flight of a passenger jet on 100% “sustainable aviation fuel”—in this case, a blend of biological waste from cooking oil, animal fat, and corn.
Gevo would like to brew SAF in Lake Preston from all the corn in Kingsbury County and government handouts, but they’ve threatened to take their super-distillery elsewhere if we don’t roll over and let Iowa Republicans eminent-domain their carbon dioxide pipeline through East River. Now as Gevo pulls solar panels from the proposed project site, their chief operating officer, Chris Ryan, tries to “amend” that threat:
“I don’t see us leaving…That site in Lake Preston is such a good site,” Ryan said. Once a CO2 pipeline is implemented the site will be “great” for developing sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), Ryan said.
Ryan’s comments differ from chief executive officer Patrick Gruber’s comments made to KELOLAND News about five weeks ago. Gruber said then “If we don’t have resolution, say, in six months, I think I better move to another state. That’s what I think. I need to have a line of sight that it’s gonna happen for real.”
Ryan said his comments are an amendment to the earlier statements.
Meanwhile, “we do have six other sites in other places we continue to evaluate,” Ryan said. If any of those sites provide a higher degree of certainty for CO2 pipelines that may [sic] the site to develop a SAF plant, he said [Rae Yost, “Solar Panels Gone; Gevo Still in South Dakota,” KELO-TV, 2023.12.08].
Even without the word Yost left out (be? become?), we can see that the only amendment to the threat Gevo began issuing in October is a rhetorical shift to managerial fog-speak. Ryan’s core message is the same as PR dude Kent Hartwig’s message to the Brown County Commission in October and CEO Gruber’s ultimatum on KELO-TV in November: if South Dakota doesn’t permit the Summit Carbon Solutions CO2 pipeline and do it soon, Gevo will move its SAF project out of South Dakota… like maybe to Wales, where Lanzatech UK may make jet juice for RIchard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic fleet.
Ba-byeee! Why would you want a company that makes such ultimatums?
New Mexico might be a better choice anyway since much of the infrastructure already exists.
https://www.abqjournal.com/business/high-flying-news-comes-back-to-earth/article_8f3e43d6-95ec-11ee-93c5-f70ead60195e.html
I’m pulling my proposed bio jet fuel, wind, nuclear and solar complex too if the co2 pipeline isn’t built. :-/
Take that.
Mr. Kurtz, thanks for the info. I had no idea that is where Osaprey pilot training was done
You would love New Mexico, Jerry.
How are they leaving when they are not presently there?
And as you exit
May the road upon which you arrived
Roll up and disappear behind you.