Delta Airlines’ Private Refinery to Start Blending Biofuels

Did you know that Delta Airways owns its have gasoline refinery? Yeah, neither did I, and now, in accordance to a report revealed Friday by Reuters, that refinery could be getting completely ready to start making biofuels. That’s cool, but don’t anticipate your up coming 737 flight’s jet exhaust to odor like french fries.

It would feel that Delta’s shift to get started mixing biofuels into its present jet fuel blends is extra of a perform to get out of paying for emissions compliance credits than altering how it fuels its planes. The U.S. Renewable Fuel Normal mandates that refiners mix at any time-increasing quantities of biofuels into their products and solutions or else acquire credits from refiners that do. These credits, as you could have guessed, are not low-cost.

Delta’s refinery (aka Monroe Power) — which it purchased close to a ten years in the past to save a tiny funds on gasoline — will now be in a position to start off offering credits to other refiners, which, if it is anything at all like Tesla and its carbon offset credit history income, could confirm to be a really worthwhile sideline for the airline.

Monroe Power has historically struggled to switch a financial gain under Delta’s possession, and the corporation has tried to sell it off on multiple events. That adjusted this calendar year as Russia’s military action against Ukraine brought on charges to soar, main the refinery to make $323 million between January and June.

The selection to retrofit the refinery to make it capable of mixing biofuels is a significant just one, necessitating the building of two significant tanks, with one particular of those tanks already developed as of publication and the subsequent a person scheduled to be accomplished in October.

We attempted to attain Delta for remark but did not hear back again in time for publication.