Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF): Preparing for Takeoff ft. Ashwin Jadhav (Twelve)

As businesses and leaders navigate their sustainability journeys, one area continues to be a bit of a conundrum: aviation. We know that we need to reduce our carbon footprint, and yet corporate travel, sourcing components and delivering product continue to play a critical role in our operations. On a more personal note, it is not lost on me that I sometimes must fly to conferences to speak about the importance of ESG.

The question therefore becomes: how can we make aviation more environmentally friendly?

On this episode, I dive into what might very well be the best option on the market: Sustainable Aviation Fuel (or SAF for short) with Ashwin Jadhav, Vice President of Business Development at Twelve, a chemical company for the climate era that makes everyday products from air instead of oil. At Twelve, Ashwin oversees the customer acquisition, sales and commercial strategy their SAF products. 

Ashwin is a self-proclaimed aviation nerd, bringing over 15 years of industry experience in business development, sales, and marketing at companies like Bombardier, Pratt & Whitney and IATA before joining Twelve. Ashwin holds a degree in Executive Leadership from the West Point Military Academy, and has an M.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 

In this episode, he helps us to better understand the value of sustainable aviation fuel, how businesses and leaders with strong ESG programs are positively accelerating this model as are government regulations, how airlines can go about selecting sustainable fuel, the safety measures in place around the use of SAF, and much more.

So, the next time you have to fly or ship your business’ products, know that some incredible innovation is underway to make this more sustainable thanks those like Ashwin and his colleagues at Twelve. The exciting part is that sustainable aviation fuel is only going to increasingly soar!

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Welcome, Ashwin. I'm so happy to have you on this episode of The Resilience Report.

Thanks for having me.

You have a really interesting job and you work at a fascinating company. But before we jump into that, would you mind sharing a little bit as to your professional journey that brought you to where you are today?

Sure, absolutely. So, I've been an aviation geek all my life. I've been in the industry for more than 15 years now. I have a degree in aerospace engineering and after I completed my schooling, I got an excellent opportunity with IATA, the International Air Transport Association based in Montreal. I spent many years with them just understanding the aviation business and getting a lot of experience directly with the airlines globally, just understanding how they purchase aircrafts, how they purchase fuel, what are the key strategic elements that that they look at and then that made me realize that I wanted to get into the industry a bit more. My next venture was with Bombardier commercial aircraft based in Montreal as well. At the time, when Bombardier was going through a very big transition phase with some of their commercial aircraft portfolio between 2016 and 2018. I was part of this incredible journey with Bombardier where we positioned the C-series (back then it was called the C-series still) into the market and we ended up getting some really big deals signed with Delta and Air Canada and airBaltic. Unfortunately, in 2018, the company divested and then the commercial aircraft portfolio was sold off to different entities. So, the C-series ended up going to Airbus, which is now called the A220 aircraft. At that point, I joined Pratt and Whitney was the largest engine manufacturer and I had several roles with them in strategy and the commercial organization as well. And then that that got me to where I am today, which is thinking about sustainability and the intersection specifically of sustainability and aviation and what we need to do as a whole to get to our 2050 objectives. I joined Twelve recently, and I take care of the business development for them and that's been a tremendous experience with the journey across the entire value chain in aviation and I've gotten to love the industry more and more as I've gone forward with this journey.

And so you mentioned your passion of sustainability and aviation crossing over right now. I think the average person understands that air transit results in a lot of emissions, but would you maybe help us understand as to the classic industry what are we talking about in terms of scale or scope of emissions?

In general, aviation accounts for about 3% of global emissions today and we, approximately to meet some of the 2050 objectives that have been laid out by the United Nations and the International Civil Aviation Organization, we would need about 26 billion gallons of sustainable fuel in order to meet the Net-Zero objective. Currently, we're nowhere close. The industry is extremely low on capacity of SAF itself. And even the projections and the scale up show that we'll fall short. Essentially, we would somewhere in the high teen billion gallons if we follow current projections. So, I think in general SAF is one of the most immediate opportunities that we have to address climate change via the aviation industry. There are other pathways obviously: electrification of the aircraft, alternative propulsion solutions like hydrogen, but a lot of those are capital intensive. They take time to get to market. There's a safety component as well associated to it. So, the opportunity that we have in SAF is immediate, and it's also widespread simply because the fuel itself can be used for aircraft of different sizes and different stage lengths as well. I think, from an overall industry context, it's been recognized that SAF is a game changer in the immediate future and a lot of focus has been placed on it so that we can get to those 2050 objectives that that we've set forth.

And this might seem like a really silly question, but when we're talking about transportation and making it more sustainable, we (at least for cars!) often think of electrification. You mentioned we're starting to see this a little bit in the aviation space, but could you explain why this is quite complicated? I know it has a lot to do with weight and just kind of how far you can go with an electrified airplane. But, could you explain a little bit as to why that might not be as easy of a solution as we can see for example in cars?

At a very simplified level, anything that you put in the aircraft is going to take space and it's going to take weight. Even the fuel itself has its own weight. So sometimes you're just carrying more fuel to carry the fuel. I think at a very simplistic level, all of the technologies in the future have a have a weight component associated to them and a space component as well because space equals revenue for most airlines and even cargo operators. So, let's take batteries, for example. Today the battery density is at a certain stage where the battery itself is much bigger and is much heavier than we would want it to be, hence it would take space in certain aircraft of three seats or six seats, for example, which means that you're not getting that revenue from those passengers as well. It's a similar case with the hydrogen propulsion as well. The space that hydrogen takes in any aircraft is quite a bit, so that the next few decades will simply be about how do we compress that hydrogen into a smaller space and make sure it weighs less. So any anything that has a space and a weight component associated to it means that the aircraft is impacted in terms of propulsion, in terms of range, and in terms of speed. And that indirectly converts into safety as well, simply because if you want to fly across the Atlantic, you need to comply with certain regulations in in terms of range and making sure that you're always carrying extra fuel, you have alternate airport identifier etcetera, etcetera. From that perspective, it's a really big challenge to make sure that not only you're tackling the weight aspect of things so that things are more economical, but you're also making sure that from a safety perspective things are quite sound. 

You compared it to the car industry for example. In the car industry, the way the majority of the time the propulsion system works is if the propulsion fails, the car stalls and most drivers these days can pull over to the side of the road, put their parking lights on, etcetera. In the aviation industry, the implications and the actual execution is much more severe. Because if you're in the air, you may not have an alternate airport close by. You may be in an urban area, etcetera, etcetera. So the amount of time it will take to go to market for some of these solutions is longer simply because it's not only looked at from an economical perspective, but also from a safety perspective. And then the economical perspective is just the more expensive the technology is, the heavier it is, the more seats you're taking away from the aircraft itself, the more the airline passenger has to pay as an average fare. So, there's that implication as well. That's where technology has to get to a stage where it it's more economical to actually be implemented in the industry. 

That's where I think sustainable aviation fuel has certain advantages. Because we are already using the fuel today, and the majority of the newer sustainable fuels that are coming out into the market don't really require major modifications in the tankage or in the actual engines themselves. We have an opportunity here to continue doing what we're doing and just implement a sustainability element into the loop. It may cost a bit more for now from an economics perspective, but I think there's a cost curve associated with each of the fuel technologies and eventually it'll get to parity with fossil-based fuel.

You mentioned the acronym SAF for Sustainable Aviation Fuel, is that just a general term for anything that is an alternative to current fuel or is it really a specific kind of technology? I'm curious because you do see the acronym from time to time in articles and I'm just wondering is that a general category? Or is it specifically speaking about a type of technology?

SAF is Sustainable Aviation Fuels and, by definition, it is any fuel that is created for aviation purposes that is not fossil based. So SAF can be made using different pathways. And it can be made using different feedstock as well. And feedstock is the primary input essentially. So, we have SAF being tested and produced in the industry using cooking oil, using waste products from forestry, using gases, using alcohol even. There's a lot of feedstock that that you can use to actually go down specific chemical pathways to produce the chemical components that are in jet fuel. The majority of them, because they're in their early stages, have to be blended with fossil-based jet fuel because of compliance reasons. But there's a pathway moving forward where we would want to use SAF just by itself without any blending with fossil-based fuel. We're a few years away from that. But I think that there's a different connotation to it and there's so many different pathways to actually make the SAF these days.

So with your work at Twelve, you and your teams are tackling this idea of SAF and finding alternative solutions for the aviation sector. Could you speak a little bit about your company’s iteration as to what that solution might look like?

Twelve is a carbon transformation company. We eliminate emissions from everyday products by transforming carbon dioxide into chemicals, materials and fuels that make up our modern world. We do this in two main steps. The first step is CO2 electrolysis where we take the carbon dioxide and other inputs like renewable energy and water and then transform that into specific gases. Those gases are then converted using a Fischer-Tropsch process, which is Step 2 into liquids. We can use this two-step process to make a variety of products like laundry detergent, car parts, sunglass accessories and different types of fuel including jet fuel and marine fuel as well. Basically, any hydrocarbon-based product can be made and we can reformulate the molecules using our core technology. Essentially, the feedstock like I mentioned, the input is carbon dioxide, and we specifically use only biogenic sources of carbon dioxide and that means that we're focusing on some of the cleaner carbon-based products. So, the sources that we're getting carbon dioxide from are pulp and paper manufacturing, bio gas facilities etcetera. And the electricity as well that we're using to perform the electrolysis is completely renewable electricity only; we only use solar, wind, hydro or nuclear electricity. And there's also an infusion of hydrogen into the process, and that hydrogen is only green hydrogen, which means that there's no fossil content in in there. The combination of these three elements, the biogenic CO2 sources, the renewable electricity and the green hydrogen helps us produce the fuel, but the life cycle emissions that are obtained through this process give us a 90% advantage over fossil-based fuel. So, there's a 90% emissions reduction because of the way we've set these things up.

At this stage, we're very confident that we're going to hit the 90% mark using a different variety of the sources of the electricity and the hydrogen. The fuel itself is 100% certified using the pathway that I mentioned (the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis process) it's ASTM-certified and it's drop in ready at a 50/50 blend level today, so no modifications needed to the aircraft, pins to the fuel tanks, etcetera. And we've tested the product and certified it with the United States Air Force already.

And where does this kind of process happen? Is this in a factory in a lab? I'm just trying to figure out where your teams are working on these solutions.

There are three locations right now that that we have and that we publicly announced. The first location where all the magic really started was the lab in Berkeley, CA, where our founders really, after their PhD, researched, they met, and they founded the company and they realize that it's fairly groundbreaking technology. So, the lab was formed quite a few years ago in Berkeley, and that has just grown in size. That's where we test the product; that's where we're looking at scaling up and we're doing different testing related to improvement and efficiency gains that the product can have. 

We also have another pilot scale plant in Alameda, CA where we're essentially stacking all of the electrolyzers together to test the technology at scale. As we want to scale up from 100 stacks of these to 1000 stacks of their trials themselves, we want to make sure that there's no efficiency loss in the process itself. And we're able to then produce the gases that that we want. So that's where the entire scale up is happening and the testing at a larger scale is happening. 

And then our first full scale production plant where the actual fuel will be produced will be in Washington state and we've already begun construction for that plant, and we will produce fuel there starting next year. So, these are the three main locations where we're really set up and each of those locations have a specific purpose. In the future, we envision having some sort of gigafactory as well where we would produce the electrolyzers themselves at a larger scale so that we can produce it in one place, get economies of scale because of that mass production and then deploy them into all of the production sites in the future.

Very exciting. The product’s name is E-Jet® correct? So, I'm curious with E-Jet, where do you see the biggest opportunity at the moment? Is there demand coming from one specific sector or is it from the end customer? Where you're seeing that pull?

Aviation accounts for such a big footprint in everyone's life. Everybody either travels for work or pleasure, or they have packages sent via air cargo. So, the demand is coming from everywhere. That's the answer. It's primarily from the airlines that are actually burning the fuel. They have scope one emissions that they would like to really focus on, and they have a whole decarbonization plan and sustainability roadmap. We've seen a lot of demand coming from the airlines themselves.

Because we're based in North America, there's a large demand in North America itself combined with the incentives that that the government is offering for the production and for the actual use of the sustainable fuels. In addition to that, there's a huge demand coming from the corporate sector. Airlines obviously burn the fuel, but there are corporate customers that use a lot of these airlines quite often for their business travels. And these corporate customers have what we call scope 3 emissions. So, their demand is what's causing the airline to actually fly more right. So, the corporations have actually decided that they want to decarbonize, and they want to have some sort of a sustainability play. And this is part of their ESG road map essentially. What they're doing is they're taking on a lot of these premiums that the airlines would normally pay and the corporate customers are essentially buying the attributes of the fuel from us so that they can then use those as carbon offsets. Essentially emissions that they would normally cause are being offset because of the sustainable fuel that they're purchasing from us. 

In a nutshell, we're seeing demand from so many places.  The first flight, and I mentioned next year is with Alaska Airlines, but the corporate customer associated with that purchase is Microsoft. And Microsoft has a very large footprint in aviation. They travel a lot for business meetings and whatnot. They also have a lot of data centers for which they want to offset the emissions. And at the end of the day, Alaska, Microsoft are leaders in the sustainability space. I think that kind of proves this new model that we're going towards where it's not just the primary customers and the airlines that want to decarb, but there are corporations and freight forwarders and even individuals buying carbon offsets when they're purchasing tickets that are contributing to this this model. So, the demand is coming from everywhere and I think it's a collective effort that everybody's recognizing that needs to be put forward in order to get to those 2050 objectives.

It sounds like the right industry to be in right now if the demand is coming in from all those different angles. Are there any specific bottlenecks or roadblocks that might be slowing down the adoption of this technology that you can see?

I think the biggest roadblock actually has been the cost itself. Any new technology, especially in the chemical / oil and gas sector, requires a very large capital investment. And one of my best go-to lines is we're in a space where we are taking one of the most capital-intensive endeavors and we have combined it with a customer that has the lowest margin in any industry in any sector. So that has been the biggest gap. How do we take this cost and then somehow apply it to the customers that really cannot absorb any kind of volatility or cost? 

What's helped a lot is some of the incentives that the United States and Canada have put forward. There's been a lot of impetus put on producing the SAF so that there are production incentives that the Inflation Reduction Act gives producers. There's also a lot of low carbon fuel standards that states and provinces have put forward. So, if you're actually burning the fuel in a specific state, and obviously the fuel is sustainable, you get a certain kind of incentive for that as well. I think that the economic gap that we had seen for the last decade or so is starting to be bridged because of these amazing incentives and projects that that the government is putting out there. I also think that, on some level, the cost of the material and the electrolyzers and the polymers and all of these elements that are required to make the technology infusion successful have been extremely expensive, but over the last, let's say, five or six years, the cost of these elements and these material has significantly reduced as well. So, that has been a major roadblock in the industry in general and we we're starting to see that being resolved through these initiatives. And, obviously, different governments and different territories are going to have different approaches to this. I know in Europe there is more of a taxation approach, where they're mandating the airlines to use sustainable aviation fuels by 2030 for example, whereas in the in the United States, it's more of a carrot approach where they're actually providing incentives if these are used. I think these are helping tremendously. 

What's also helping is that one of the roadblocks has been just the absorption of the cost. I think a lot of the corporations like I mentioned coming forward with their ESG initiatives and making sure that they contribute to the economics of this entire model has helped a lot. That has been a big roadblock until now where it's been a very singular model that the fuel is produced and then the airline pays for the fuel and then actually burns the fuel. Now that model is changing into the actual Scope 3 users in the corporations and the individuals flying are actually contributing to the gap in the cost itself.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you mentioned that there are maybe nuances between provinces / between states. It sounds like there might be a carrot approach in North America and then maybe more of a stick in Europe. Are you seeing those being the biggest differences between countries? Is it really just in terms of the incentives that the government is putting in place? Or what would you say is the biggest nuance between the different countries in terms of opportunities for SAF?

The nuances I think are a combination of a few things. The first thing we're noticing between some of the countries and continents is that the different airlines have different business models. As you move from some of the more leisure carriers to some of the more hub and spoke models out there that have corporate partners already set up, the dynamics shift quite a bit. 

But then, when we go from region to region, each government has had a slightly different approach to decarbonizing each of the sectors. There are some territories where aviation is not the immediate priority; their focus is more on the food and beverage industry or the apparel industry, because that is actually causing the majority of the emissions in those specific countries. Aviation will get its incentives at some point. I think that that's been one of the primary differences here where airlines are really following the government and their prioritization. But essentially, I think what we've noticed a lot and a common theme for us is that every corporate customer, every airline, every airport has absolutely recognized that this is a problem and this needs to be addressed. And that's a common theme across all geographies and everybody is putting together some sort of a plan, a roadmap to get to 2030 and 2050. 

They're also putting together funds. Different airlines, different geographies (Australia, the Middle East, Europe) have announced funds that are specific to aviation fuels or to decarbonization. And this money will not be touched and only be used for investment into technologies or investment into specific areas of interest that would help them accelerate their road map to decarbonization. I think that's where the nuance, region to region, exists as well. 

The other nuance is the approach that is being taken towards the scale up. In some cases, the approach has been simply to purchase the fuel and make sure that the fuel enters those geographies and it's burned by the airlines. But, in some other territories, we're noticing that the governments actually want to take things faster and they want to go steps ahead in in terms of bringing the technology to those countries and then producing the fuel in-house. We're looking at different options there as well and looking at opportunities to partner with different governments and create an entire ecosystem in that specific region and to then supply the airline, supply the corporate customers and make sure that the electricity from that region is being used and the carbon dioxide from that specific region is being absorbed. So yeah, there's been so many different approaches I would say, and the nuances really depend on the dynamic that exists with the governments, with the business model of the actual airlines and the corporate customer.

And actually, with you speaking now, I have a bit of a logistics question: if I was a sustainability manager for an airline and I wanted to reach out to Twelve or another SAF provider, what would even be the first step? Is it speaking to the airport? Is the airport the decision maker in the sense that they decide what fuel is available on site. Or is it something that, as an airline, I can go ahead and just make that decision and it's done quite quickly? I'm just wondering from a logistics standpoint how that happens.

From a logistics standpoint, the airline is free to purchase any type of fuel that that they want and the producer can then deliver that fuel to the airport’s fueling system.

In very specific cases, with some of the smaller airports for example, the airport is just mass purchasing the fuel itself, and then the smaller airlines or business aircraft operator or general aviation pilots for example just purchase the fuel from the airport. But when we're talking on a larger scale with larger airlines, for example, the purchasing is direct because it's for millions of gallons essentially.

So, most of my conversations are directly with the fuel purchasing managers at airlines. And then, based on their demand, we have the ability to deliver the fuel to a specific airport or specific refinery or fuel farm of their choice.

Very interesting. From a safety standpoint, you mentioned that obviously we're talking at a whole different scale of safety in terms of bringing in new technology. My background is in the built space, and I know that, as we bring new technology (for example new, more sustainable solutions to cement) one of the bottlenecks that we're facing there is that it needs to be tested for X number of years before it can be specified. Is that something that you face as well? Or is it more a question of doing rigorous testing (that is not so much a time frame)? I'm wondering as to what that looks like from a safety standpoint and regulatory framework.

The safety aspect in aviation is paramount. There's nothing more important than safety and that's why I think, from our perspective, we've really focused on ensuring that our fuel is safe and compliant with multiple standards. We did recognize early on in the process that having an uncertified fuel would take longer to penetrate into the market, because we would need to undergo several years of testing and proving that the fuel is safe and can be operated at certain temperatures. But I think that's why we focused on the ASTM pathway which is already certified via the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. The pathway is already ASTM certified, so essentially the fuel produced is certified as well, and then the post blended product is also certified by the by the ASTM standard. So that removed a lot of the barriers for this specific pathway, and I think our focus has always been to penetrate as fast into the market and to scale up at velocity because that's what the aviation market needs at this stage. 

I think that has given us a lot of advantage in this entire process. We did have to test the product with the United States Air Force like I mentioned, but we got the certification fairly quickly. Having said that, even every future batch of fuel that we produce will be tested prior to delivery right at the doorstep of each production plant. We will have the mechanisms in place to make sure that when there's a transfer of owner for the actual fuel itself, there's a testing process and every batch of the fuel complies with the specific standards that are required. In addition to that, all of our customers have specific carbon intensity requirements as well. Since they're purchasing sustainable fuel, the testing will also include the carbon intensity testing, the safety testing,  anything from a compliance perspective as well. And these compliance requirements may slightly differ from one region to the other as well. Hence we're making sure that we're compliant in different regions at different scales and with different regulatory authorities. The safety aspect has always been on our minds and, from a compliance perspective, even before we started to produce the fuel, we were ensuring that we're part of the right discussions with the IKO and with the RSB to make sure that the fuel is compliant, the pathway is compliant, that when we actually start producing the fuel, there will be no issues from that perspective.

It's encouraging to hear mention of these third-party certifications, especially as we approach the topic of greenwashing. This is definitely something that we're seeing across different industries and there was a big headline this week (time of recording) in the aviation space about some fines linked to greenwashing. Is there anything that companies or consumers can do within the aviation sector to make sure that, when they are investing or buying from a certain company with sustainability claims, they are backed?

I would say the primary objective here has to be very clear. And I think that is to just use products that are non-fossil based. As long as airlines and other customers are doing that, there needs to be a registry and that's something that the industry is currently really focusing on is. How do we make sure that the product is viable #1 and then #2 that it's actually entering the aviation industry and being used and #3 that it's not being double counted. When these fuels are burned, there are corporate customers that are claiming scope 3 attributes as well. Now who's keeping track of 1 scope 3 customer burning a specific batch of fuel versus another? So, these are collective opportunities that we have as an industry to really improve our registries, our tracking systems and our plans. I think a lot of the issues we're facing right now are because these frameworks don't really exist. And even if they do exist, they differ from one sector to another, from one region to another. This is where there is an opportunity with the UN or with other international organizations to really create something that's more universal, something that's more recognized globally where you have that stamp of authority. If you're following those guidelines and if you're part of those registries, you can never be accused of greenwashing because you're following the gold standards. So, I think that's what's really required. And, in the industry, we see everybody working towards that quite a bit. Because we're, like I said, entering a different model of operation. This is something that's never been done before. It may take some time, but it has to be done absolutely in the right way to avoid these sorts of confusions and disagreements and claims of greenwashing.

I'm sure that everything you're working on right now is super exciting, but is there one specific project that you have in the go on the go right now that you're particularly excited about?

I would say the project that we're most excited about is the first flight next year with Alaska Airlines. There's nothing more exciting than just seeing the full fuel being produced for the first time, and then making its way into a tanker, seeing it being blended at a blending facility, making its way to Seattle airport and then really having a firsthand view of it being uplifted into that Alaska Airlines aircraft. I think all that will happen next year and that’s the event that we're all very excited about obviously. In addition to that, once that happens, we will be excited about every other step that comes after that because we'll be looking at our second and third plants for production in other states. We'll also be looking at other new customers that will sign with us over the next months. And, just in general, the scale up. In order to achieve what we want to achieve, we need many production sites across North America by 2030. We need a very, very fast ramp-up of production in each of the sites and we need a lot of customers at the end of the day. Just seeing that fuel being delivered to Europe one day or to the Middle East or to Asia Pacific, that'll be exciting as well. We recently announced an MOU with Etihad Airways for fuel uplift in the United States for their long-haul fleet. So that's another really exciting moment for us, where it's a few years down the road, but seeing that fuel being used over the ocean on such long-haul flights will be a pretty exciting moment as well. So lots to look forward to from our perspective.

Very exciting. Well, I'll definitely be lurking on LinkedIn to see what's going on with you and with Twelve. Speaking of Twelve, we talked a lot about E-Jet. Are there other projects in the works right now that you can share? I think this is maybe one avenue and one path to market that you're currently exploring, but I'm sure there's other technology available as well.

Absolutely. Like I mentioned, we have the ability (using the core technology) to really produce various products, anything that for hydrocarbon nature. We've done pilot projects with laundry detergent providers, with sunglass manufacturers, even with Mercedes for car parts. There are a lot of opportunities there and we are speaking with various corporate customers that are producing apparel or footwear to actually use some of these products. And then also talking to them about some of their carbon offsets via the E-Jet stream. There's a lot of really big and fun discussions happening right now, but for now, our flagship and our focus is really the E-Jet. But having said that, we are definitely talking to other companies looking at opportunities where (as we scale up on the E-Jet side) we can then have specific production facilities dedicated to footwear or apparel or other forms of fuels, even e-marine or electoral. The opportunities are endless, but I think we have to really be disciplined and picky on our side simply because there's a cost element associated with each of these streams. And I think we've done well so far in picking the stream that will take us to market the fastest and that will bridge our cost to price gap the fastest as well. 

So, I think lots of opportunity and looking forward to these discussions with a lot of the other manufacturers in other spaces. I think just the idea of having your entire ecosystem around you made from carbon dioxide is something that we've never thought of. Imagine your keyboard on your laptop: that the keys are made from carbon dioxide. Imagine your sunglasses, parts of your shoes are also made from carbon dioxide. So, I think there's this big picture vision where multiple products in our everyday lives are made from air and not oil and I think we're going to get there eventually; it's just a matter of the next products that we pick out of the big list that that we have.

And as a self-proclaimed aviation nerd, was there a specific moment in time where that passion began to intersect with sustainability, or was it more of a gradual process?

It was a gradual process, I would say. I remember, in my days with AIRA, I had the opportunity to visit many airlines. I remember being at the LaGuardia Airport once. I think I was in the Delta Airlines Operation Center at LaGuardia, where you could see both runways, you could see the skyline. It's a beautiful place to be and you have a 360-degree view of the entire airport. And you can see that a lot of the aircraft at LaGuardia use a steep approach. There's one aircraft landing, the other taking off, the runways intersect, so you have to be really efficient with those operations and you could literally (because there's water in the background and there's buildings in the background with the skyline) you could see a lot of the wake effect that each of the airlines leave behind and sometimes there's smoke and soot and whatever else left behind. And I think that was the first moment where I realized “Oh my God. There are so many emissions here and there are people living literally half a kilometer across the river. And it was quite a large scale of emissions, and I think that just kept growing that idea of sustainability.

When I started to work at Bombardier, I got an idea of how each aircraft burns fuel differently and is set up differently. The turboprops, for example, that Bombardier used to manufacture were extremely efficient from a fuel efficiency and emissions perspective. So, that became sort of my inspiration where I wished more aircraft would follow that route.

And then, as I progressed in my career, nothing made me more aware of emissions than when I was at Pratt and Whitney because Pratt and Whitney is just the leader in this space. If you're creating the product that is the actual source of the emissions themselves (the engines), you really have to have sustainability top of mind.  Just the discussions that I got to be a part of at Pratt and Whitney, the vision that they have just was tremendous. That one gave me that real hunger to be a part of that sustainability roadmap. And I wanted to be at the forefront of it. And, like I said, some of the engine technology is still a few years away from being implemented, and I think that's why, when I got the opportunity to understand the industry in depth a bit more, understand which technologies are going to have the biggest impact and the quickest impact, SAF just was one of the ones that came to the forefront. That led to this opportunity with Twelve and I just had to jump for it. 

I think it was a very gradual process, to answer your question, and that realization just kept growing. That combined with everything that happened during the pandemic and that combined with all of the global warming effects and all of the COP discussions and roadmaps that we're having, I think it just makes you realize as an individual that if you have the opportunity to make an impact, you should take it. I kind of got that opportunity and then I had that self-realization that I just wanted to be in that space even more.

You’re definitely is a transformative space, and arguably even a disruptive space within the sector, which is not always the easiest space to find yourself and it can feel like there might be a little bit more headwinds when you're trying to progress forward. Are there any resources or practices that you have in your back pocket to keep yourself engaged and motivated, even when it's not always the easiest position to find yourself?

My approach to this has always been you want to leave things in a better place for the future generation. And that's just the singular piece of motivation that I personally have always had and I think this is true for all of us in in some way or the other. It's about our houses, our businesses, whatever part of life you want to look at. I know that there are business owners today who want to leave their business in better hands for future generations, so that when they take over, they don't have to go through the same struggles. A lot of parents out there want to do the same thing. The struggles that they went through as a child, they don't want their future generations to go through the same outlook. That's what my go to motivation piece is.

We have the made mistakes as a generation and as a humanity in general I would say but we have an opportunity to correct those mistakes and then improve the conditions for future generations to come. Just thinking about the effects of not reversing climate change by 2050 and by 2100, it’s scary. That's just been my continuous thought, and that's what keeps me going every day. 

It's just something that, at Twelve, we value so much. Every single person that I've interacted with and everybody at the company just has these core values that they are absolutely 100% focused on the climate and they want nothing more than for the climate situation to improve and for there to be cleaner air. It's one of the values that we really look for the most in any future employees as well. That's what attracted me to the company as well. And we are really in that mindset that it's going to take everyone to make this 2050 vision happen. It's not just us, it's us plus other companies in the SAF manufacturing space, it's other engine OEMs, and airlines and airports and governments. It's everybody that has to come together for this to work. Otherwise, it's not going to look really good by 2050. So, I think that's just the constant source of inspiration for me.

Well, I'm so happy that you and your colleagues are all involved in this industry and transition, I'd say for all of our economies. So, thank you for sharing everything today; I learned a ton. We always like to wrap up every episode with the same question, which is what do you think it will take for businesses and leaders to be resilient going forward?

I would say that, for businesses and leaders to be resilient moving forward, you obviously have to have your business as the center of everything, which means that you always want to make sure that you're surviving as a business number one. But at the same time, I think that the resilience has to come from your people and your processes and your tools and your vision. 

If you look at the four key things it's mission, vision, values. Your actual values make you progress towards the mission and the vision. And I think that that resilience comes from those values essentially and you can see a lot of corporations these days focusing on sustainability as being part of creating that roadmap, making sure that they're either offsetting some of their carbon footprint or making sure that they're contributing to the future in some way. So, I think it's just continuing to develop and maintain your mission, vision, values and having that sustainability component will actually drive a lot of the resilience.

Well, thank you so much. This hour has flown by, so thank you so much Ashwin for joining us on The Resilience Report.

Thanks for having me, Lauren.