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⛽️ 90 Sustainable Fuel Frontrunners
As the world shifts to cleaner energy, a quiet revolution is happening in the world of fuel – one that could change how we power everything from jets to factories.
The transportation sector alone accounts for nearly a quarter of global CO2 emissions. And the race to decarbonize how we get around is picking up pace.
Yet as the world moves toward a more electrified future, it still heavily depends on fossil fuels to get goods, people, and power where it needs to go.
While electric solutions make headlines, sustainable fuels – from biofuels to eFuels – hold tremendous potential to decarbonize some of the hardest-to-abate sectors like aviation, shipping, and heavy industry.
Scroll on to get to know some of the pioneers behind early and late stage companies taking sustainable fuels to new heights:
10 Future Fuel Companies to Know
🗓 Founded: 2021
👋 Founders: Leigh Hackett, Saurabh Kapoor, Ulrich Koss
🇨🇭 Country: Switzerland
💸 Raised so far: $13M
👀 Investors Include: Energy Impact Partners, Contrarian Ventures, Swiss Ministry for Energy
Metafuels plans to make affordable net-zero aviation a reality with a breakthrough SAF technology they call aerobrew.
Why: Incumbent technologies are associated with lack of efficiency, high production costs and scalability constraints.
How: The technology selectively and efficiently converts methanol to sustainable aviation fuel. It has recently raised $8m in venture investment and a $5m grant to demonstrate its technology and advance development of its first production projects.
Unfair advantage: Aerobrew is a proprietary technology that they say is “the missing piece of the jigsaw” for converting green methanol to SAF with a high selectivity and ultra-high yield. Its scalability, high efficiency, and integrated design allows for lowest cost of production while simultaneously delivering high CO2 lifecycle reduction. The technology does not chip away at food and feed supply chains.
🗓 Founded: 2010
👋 Founders: Philippe Lacamp, Maarten van Dijk, Theye Veen
🇳🇱 Country: Netherlands
💸 Raised so far: $191M
👀 Investors Include: Macquarie Asset Management
SkyNRG is fuelling a new era of progress in aviation by scaling up SAF demand and production capacity.
Why: Their mission is to build up SAF capacity so aviation can meet its 2050 net zero commitment.
How: Since 2010, SkyNRG has been working to source, blend, and distribute SAF to airlines worldwide while creating partnerships that significantly increase the supply and production of SAF all over the world.
Unfair advantage: The company was the first in the world to supply SAF on a commercial flight flown by co-founder and shareholder KLM Royal Dutch Airlines in 2011. SkyNRG now plans to develop dedicated SAF production plants, starting with a plant in the Netherlands and a facility in the Pacific Northwest of the USA.
🗓 Founded: 2017
👋 Founders: Gregory Constantine and Dr. Stafford Sheehan
🇺🇸 Country: USA
💸 Recent Raise: $69 million
👀 Investors Include: Lowercarbon Capital, Avfuel
Air Company is paving a pathway to global decarbonization by transforming CO₂ into endless resources via industrial scale applications.
Why: Next it is commercializing its carbon utilization technology and sustainable aviation fuels (SAF).
How: Working with nature, rather than against it, their proprietary AIRMADE™ Technology mimics photosynthesis to transform carbon dioxide and water via renewable energy into carbon-negative chemicals and fuels.
Unfair advantage: Air Company has commercial partnerships with airlines including JetBlue and Virgin Atlantic, amongst others, and have been awarded multiple government contracts from NASA and the United States Department of Defense.
Join Staff Sheehan, CTO of Air Company and 500+ other Climate Deep Tech experts at the HackSummit in June
Air Company first made headlines with the world's first carbon-negative spirit; with perfume, fragrances and sanitizer from captured carbon launched in hot pursuit.
Next up, their most ambitious challenge to date. Jet fuel from CO2.
Hear from Staff at the HackSummit where he shares their scale up plans for their carbon utilization technologies and commercialization of sustainable fuel.
Staff is one of 3 new industry mavericks who will be heading to New York at the end of 2024 for two days of networking and deal making across all things Climate Deep Tech.
Head this way to see who else is speaking and what’s planned. And use code FUELUP20 for 20% off your pass.
🗓 Founded: 2015
👋 Founders: Kendra Kuhl, Etosha Cave, Nicholas Flanders
🇺🇸 Country: USA
💸 Raised so far: almost $200 million
👀 Investors Include: DCVC, Carbon Direct Capital Management, Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund, Breakthrough Energy Ventures
Twelve turns CO2 into chemicals, materials and fuels through the science of electrochemistry and technology that works like industrial photosynthesis.
Why: To decarbonize the chemical, aviation, and materials industries by converting captured CO2 into useful products, thus reducing reliance on fossil fuels.
How: Twelve uses a CO2 electrochemical reactor called OPUS to turn carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons. These hydrocarbons can be used to create products that were previously made from fossil fuels.
Unfair advantage: Their E-Jet® SAF jet fuel is made from air with up to 90% lower emissions than conventional fuel.
🗓 Founded: 2022
👋 CEO: James Hygate
🇬🇧 Country: UK
💸 Recently Raised: £5 million
👀 Offtake Agreement with: Wizz Air
Firefly Green Fuels produces sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) from sewage, reducing aviation’s carbon footprint using an abundant, problematic waste.
Why: SAF from waste like sewage offers a viable way to reduce emissions now while using existing infrastructure.
How: Using hydrothermal liquefaction, Firefly converts sewage into bio-crude, which is then refined into SAF.
Unfair advantage: Their feedstock—sewage—is abundant, cheap, and globally available, positioning Firefly as a scalable, cost-competitive SAF provider.
🗓 Founded: 2018
👋 Founders: Joachim Bachmann Nielsen, Anders Kristoffersen
🇩🇰 Country: Denmark
💸 Seed Funding: $3.2 million
👀 Investors Include: Eifo and The Footprint Firm
Kvasir Technologies is turning biomass waste into sustainable marine and aviation biofuels.
Why: To eliminate carbon emissions in the hard-to-decarbonize sectors like shipping and aviation, by using non-edible plant material as fuel.
How: With a feedstock-agnostic process called solvothermal liquefaction, Kvasir converts lignocellulosic biomass into biofuel that can be used directly as a substitute for fossil marine and aviation fuels.
Unfair advantage: A cost-competitive, scalable biofuel using abundant, non-food plant residues, without requiring new engine technologies.
🗓 Founded: 2009
👋 Founders: Alessandro Biglioli, David Keith
🇨🇦 Country: Canada
💸 Raised so far: $110 million
👀 Investors Include: Bill Gates, Murray Edwards, BHP, Chevron Technology Ventures
Carbon Engineering is pioneering Direct Air Capture technology to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere and create low-carbon fuels.
Why: Its scalability and proven technology, combined with support from leading investors, positions it as a frontrunner in large-scale carbon removal.
How: The company uses its Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology to capture CO₂ directly from the air and convert it into fuels, as well as for permanent underground storage.
Unfair advantage: Their Innovation Centre in British Columbia provides a fully-integrated plant to test, analyze and validate advancements and new pathways for this critically important technology.
🗓 Founded: 2021
👋 Founders: Andrew Symes, Jane Jin, Tiancun Xiao, Benzhen Yao.
🇬🇧 Country: UK
💸 Recently Raised: $22 million
👀 Investors Include: Aramco Ventures, Clean Energy Ventures, Kiko Ventures
OXCCU is converting CO₂ into fuels, chemicals and plastics.
Why: To address the high carbon footprint of aviation and other industries by providing a scalable, cost-effective way to decarbonize fuel production.
How: Combining captured CO2 with H2 from water and renewable electricity, producing lower carbon or circular fuels, chemicals, and biodegradable plastics.
Unfair advantage: Their inexpensive catalysts work with efficiency and selectivity, transforming CO2 into valuable hydrocarbons through a groundbreaking one-step process. CO2 can be transformed into efuels, sustainable chemicals and biodegradable plastic.
🗓 Founded: 2016
👋 Founders: Philipp Furler, Gianluca Ambrosetti
🇨🇭 Country: Switzerland
💸 Recently Raised: $70 million
👀 Investors Include: Swiss International Air Lines, SMS Group, Cemex, Eni, Pilatus Aircraft
Synhelion has developed a unique technology to produce sustainable fuels from solar energy and CO2.
Why: With its technology, Synhelion contributes to a net-zero transportation sector and drives a world connected by clean, sustainable transportation.
How: Their first industrial-scale solar fuel plant in Germany became operational in 2024, and their first commercial plant in Spain will be commissioned from 2027. Then, the company will further scale its technology.
Unfair advantage: To scale up quickly, Synhelion has developed several thermochemical Sun-to-Liquid processes to produce drop-in fuels from solar energy. Solar energy is inexpensive and abundant around the world. The company’s proprietary technology enables a cost-effective, 24/7 fuel production and their fuels reduce net CO2 emissions by up to 99% compared to fossil fuels.
🗓 Founded: 2017
👋 Founders: Tara Karimi, Moji Karimi
🇺🇸 Country: USA
👀 Investors Include: Energy Capital Ventures, 8090 Partners, Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, United Airlines, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Seldor Capital
Cemvita leverages synthetic biology and microbes to decarbonize heavy industries by turning carbon waste and CO₂ into useful products incl. fuels.
Why: Cemvita takes waste streams and carbon dioxide and uses them to produce sustainable oil which can then be used to make valuable materials like polymers, plastics, and fuels, all while remaining cost-effective and green.
How: The company leverages microbes to absorb and convert carbon waste and carbon dioxide into essential molecules needed to build a renewable future. Powered by biotech, these microbes remove emissions from the equation.
Unfair advantage: Cheaper and faster industrial biotech, at scale. This is made possible by a multidisciplinary team of scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs brought together to harness their distinctive skills to engineer a better future. As industry leaders from diverse sectors, they bring an invaluable collective perspective to the question of climate change and how businesses can thrive in a clean energy economy.
Introducing the 3 new speakers for the HackSummit in New York:
Clay Dumas, General Partner, Lowercarbon Capital
Supporting startups to reboot our democracy, suck carbon out of the atmosphere, and reform our criminal justice system, Clay is the team’s most active investor in companies that undo global warming while making real money in the process.
Alisha Fredriksson, Co-Founder and CEO, Seabound
Decarbonizing shipping with ocean-ready carbon capture, Alisha previously helped build maritime electro-fuel startup, Liquid Wind and launched a climate program at Generation, a global non-profit founded by McKinsey & Company.
Staff Sheehan, Co-Founder and CTO, Air Company
Both a scientist and entrepreneur, Staff has developed commercial technologies based on his applied research in chemistry, physics, and computer science, and has built collaborations with world-renowned universities through his research.
P.S. Code FUELUP20 gets you 20% off your pass.
The Future Fuel Landscape
Using algae, non-food crops, biomass, electrochemistry, CO2, Hydrogen, sun and waste, companies are finding new ways to create fuels of the future.
To better understand the landscape, we mapped some of the early-adopters and early-stage startups revolutionising heavy industry with new fuels.
90 Sustainable Fuel Companies
We tracked 90 companies in the space. Add new names to your radar and if there’s someone we’ve missed you can quickly add them here.