USDA selects Gevo’s Climate-Smart Farm-to-Flight proposal with funding ceiling of $30 million

Gevo Inc. announced Sept. 19 that USDA has selected its Climate-Smart Farm-to-Flight proposal for funding with an award ceiling of up to $30 million.

Gevo’s project was one of the 70 selected by USDA under the first pool of the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities funding opportunity totaling $2.8 billion.

The project aims to create critical structural climate-smart market incentives for low carbon-intensity corn as well as to accelerate the production of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) to reduce the sector’s dependency on fossil-based fuels.

“We are honored that our proposal was selected for funding as part of this historic partnership for climate-smart commodities from the U.S. Department of Agriculture,” said Paul Bloom, chief carbon officer and chief innovation officer for Gevo. “We look forward to working with the great team of partners we’ve assembled to lower our carbon footprint throughout the entire SAF business system while delivering high-quality carbon accounting, and rewarding growers for their contributions.”

The project will also focus on the importance of immutable tracking and tracing of the carbon-intensity score starting at the farm-production level, through biofuels production, all the way to the sale to an airline company.

Gevo plans to accomplish this with further development and implementation of Verity Tracking, a blockchain-enabled solutions platform for carbon tracking through the entire business system.