Carbon Neutral Private Jets?

Exclusive: NetJets invests in fuel made from waste

The private jets charter company plans to announce today that it is buying a stake in a business that converts landfill waste into so-called sustainable aviation fuel, or S.A.F., as criticism grows about the environmental impact of private charter flights, which have boomed during the pandemic.

NetJets will take a 20 percent stake in WasteFuel. The companies will collaborate on building a plant in Manila that will convert landfill-bound garbage into aviation-grade fuel. WasteFuel claims that its fuel represents an 80 percent reduction in carbon over its lifecycle compared with traditional fossil fuels.

• At full capacity, the Manila refinery is expected to convert 1 million tons of waste into 30 million gallons of fuel each year.

NetJets plans to buy at least 100 million gallons of fuel from WasteFuel over a decade. It’ll be shipped from the Manila plant to Los Angeles and then distributed across NetJet’s network. (For context, the NetJets fleet burns more than 120 million gallons of aviation fuel each year, according to a spokeswoman.)

The investment builds on NetJets’ previous commitments to reduce its climate impact. In October, the company announced that it would buy more carbon offsets and rely on more S.A.F. Such news follows a rise in private jet travel as the coronavirus depressed commercial flight activity — and ongoing concerns that chartered flights are worse for the environment.