United Airlines and United Ventures have today announced an investment and commercial agreement with Dimensional Energy. The company's novel technology converts carbon dioxide and water into usable ingredients to produce fuel from coal or methane.

On Wednesday (June 15, 2022), United Airlines and United Airlines Ventures (UAV) announced an investment and commercial agreement with CO2 Utilization company, Dimensional Energy. The energy company’s novel technology converts carbon dioxide and water into usable ingredients for use in the Fischer-Tropsch process, a nearly century-old proven technology used to produce fuels from coal or methane. Dimensional Energy will be one of the first companies to use the process to create sustainable aviation fuels (SAF). Under the agreement, United Airlines will purchase at least 300 million gallons of SAF over 20 years, advancing the carrier’s goal to achieve 100 percent green net-zero emissions by 2050.
In Wednesday’s announcment, United Airlines Ventures’ President, Michael Leskinen, said,
“Sometimes you have to look to the past to solve new problems, and we recognize that decarbonizing air travel is going to require combining proven technologies, such as Fischer-Tropsch, with the latest advances in science and engineering. As we grow our portfolio of companies like Dimensional, we are creating opportunities to scale these early-stage technologies and achieve United's commitment carbon neutrality by 2050, without the use of traditional carbon offsets.”
Also commenting on the new sustainability partnership, Dimensional Energy’s Co-Founder and CEO, Jason Salfi, added,
“Dimensional Energy is acutely focused on energy solutions that center communities who have been marginalized in the past century as infrastructure and energy systems were developed. We envision a world run on truly conflict-free energy that can scale to meet the global demand for hydrocarbon fuels and feedstocks. United's support of sustainable aviation fuel made from captured emissions is an important step in the aviation industry's pursuit of carbon neutrality.”
Dimensional Energy’s process can run on all forms of renewable energy. Currently at their Tucson site, the company uses energy from the Arizona grid which gets an increasing amount of power from solar panels. In the future, Dimensional plans on using other green sources of energy such as hydro-power, wind-power and concentrated solar. Dimensional can also use carbon dioxide from a variety of sources, such as directly from industrial sites, Direct Air Capture, and biological processes like fermentation and biomass gasification.
United Airlines’ shared purpose is “Connecting People. Uniting the World.” In 2019, United and United Express® carriers operated over 1.7 million flights carrying over 162 million guests. United Airlines operates the most comprehensive network among North American carriers with mainland U.S. hubs in Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New York/Newark, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Shares in the company’s parent, United Airlines Holdings, Inc., are publicly traded on the NASDAQ under the symbol ‘UAL.’
Source: United Airlines