Gevo Inc., a U.S. biofuel producer backed by the French oil company Total SA, more than doubled after Alaska Air Group Inc. agreed to buy its renewable jet fuel.
Gevo rose 107 percent to $5.08 in afternoon trading after earlier gaining as much as 150 percent, the most intraday since the company’s 2011 public offering.
The airline holding company’s Alaska Airlines is planning a demonstration flight this year using Gevo’s fuel, the Douglas County-based company said in a statement Thursday.
The deal is part of Alaska Air’s efforts to use sustainably produced biofuel. The carrier previously has flown aircraft using fuel derived from used cooking oil.
“If we’re at full scale, we’d have the lowest-cost, renewable-resource-based jet fuel around,” Gevo Chief Executive Officer Pat Gruber said Thursday in a telephone interview. “It’s just like standard-performance kerosene, but our stuff generally burns way cleaner than petrochemical-based jet fuel.”
Gevo converts corn and plant waste into isobutanol, which is processed into jet fuel that’s a drop-in substitute for petroleum-based fuel.
