Follow the 10-inch Pipeline that stretches south of Minneapolis -The International Airport in Paul, and after 13 miles you will find yourself in a potentially large future center for sustainable aviation fuel in the top -midds.

In an agreement announced in September, the Pine Bend refinery of Koch Industries in Rosemount, Minnesota, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) would be used-using nonpetroleum feeds, such as renewable materials or waste-it in its conventional jet fuel, and send the fuel mixture through the pipeline to the airport, where it is by delta Airlines and other carriers will be used.

Proponents of the project, including financial supporters Deloitte and Bank of America, said last year that up to 60 million liters of mixed fuel, which may contain up to 50 percent SAF, will flow by 2025, and they intend to produce 1 billion gallons SAF per year, which would exceed the demand at Minneapolis Airport and the center would make a producer for additional airports around the country and possibly the world. (There is no timeframe for the refinery to reach this larger target.)

But this project and others like it hangs from financial support frameworks such as tax credits or loans set out under the Biden Administration’s Signature 2022 Climate Act, the Inflation Reduction Act and which can now be removed.

Late last month, Montana Renewables, one of only a few US SAF producers -and the planned supplier of the first groups for the Minnesota hub -said that the first $ 782 million part of a $ 1.67 loan billion from the Department of Energy a ” tactical delay to confirm alignment with priorities in the White House. “(The US Senator Steve Daines of Montana said on February 11 that the financing, which is taken into account in the financing of the project, has since been unlawful.)

Federal incentives like this are ‘on life support’ under the Trump administration, says Scott Irwin, a professor of agricultural and consumer economics at the University of Illinois. According to Irwin, the Trump administration has so far shown that it is prepared to completely break down the reduction of inflation and its financing law, even if it means the promises are being clapped to farmers and businesses that are already starting to climate- smart work to implement.

While government incentive programs, along with low-carbon fuel standards, continue to support SAF production, Irwin does not see who can enter to replace the federal government in the credit pile if the financing is withdrawn. “Without the incentives in the Reduction of Inflation Act, SAF is dead in the water,” he says.

The refinery math already did not add up

Late last year, Wired spoke to Jake Reint, vice president of external issues for Flint Hills Resources, the company in Koch Industries that owns Pine Bend and several other refineries, petrochemical plants and pipelines. (Flint Hills is the company that entered into the agreement with Delta and other corporate partners to use the mixed fuel of Pine Bend.) Even before Donald Trump was re -elected, Rint set out the challenges of raising the SAF industry.

Under the plan, Pine Bend will download the SAF that is produced elsewhere from trucks run by Shell, the distributor in the arrangement and then mix it with the existing jet fuel mixture. This will require Pine Bend to order specialty pumps which, according to Reint, will not be delivered for a year-and it cannot be ordered until a thorough planning process is completed, including exact estimates for short-term demand.