Can you make jet fuel without hydrocarbons? Calgary oilsands experts say yes

Vista Projects and U.S. energy producer Twelve say their sustainable aviation fuel is sourced with materials that are onshore, abundant and scalable

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Calgary-based Vista Projects is more accustomed to devising ways to extract oil from beneath the surface of northeastern Alberta.

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But recently, its engineers have gone in another direction — designing a plant in the United States that produces jet fuel without oil, the first such commercial facility of its type in the U.S.

That culminated in the official christening earlier this month of energy producer Twelve’s sustainable aviation fuel AirPlant One facility in Moses Lake, Wash.

“Vista Projects brought the right mindset to a genuinely hard problem: building something that had never been built before,” said Twelve CEO Nicholas Flanders at the plant’s opening.