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Approximately 160 - 480 biochemical production facilities would be required to meet the annual production capacity of 98.6 billion liters of ethanol

Summary​

Scaling up biofuel production to meet sustainable aviation fuel demands would require a significant expansion of processing infrastructure. The United States currently has 194 active ethanol production facilities with a combined capacity of 69.9 billion liters, nearly all using corn feedstock. To reach the target of 98.6 billion liters of ethanol annually, between 161 and 483 biochemical production plants would be needed, depending on facility size. For alcohol-to-jet conversion, only one commercial facility exists worldwide, LanzaJet's Freedom Pines plant in Georgia with a capacity of 37.85 million liters per year. Scaling to the required 49.3 billion liters of sustainable aviation fuel would need approximately 1,300 similar facilities. However the freedom pines plant is the first of its kind and operates at a low annual capacity.

Ethanol production infrastructure​

Currently in the United States, there are approximately 194 active ethanol production facilities with a combined annual capacity of 69.9 billion liters, of which almost all utilize corn kernels as the primary feedstock 1. For an advanced biofuel industry that utilizes lignocellulosic biomass as its primary feedstock, significantly more production facilities would be required. This is mainly due to the fact that ethanol yields from corn are significantly higher per ton of dry biomass, meaning that smaller, and a lower number of facilities would be required. It is estimated that for a lignocellulosic biorefinery to be economically viable, its capacity should be greater than 2,000 – 5,000 dry tons per day 2. Shown in table 1 is the approximate plant number of biochemical ethanol production facilities required at three different plant capacities to meet an annual production capacity of 98.6 billion liters of ethanol.

Table 1: Estimated number of plants required for a lignocellulosic biorefinery to be economically viable

Plant SizeDaily capacity (dry tons biomass / day)Annual capacity (millions of L)Number of plants required
Small capacity2,000204483
Medium capacity4,000409241
Large capacity6,000613161

Below in table 2 is the current makeup of corn ethanol production facilities in the United States as of 2025 1. As it stands, approximately 74% of production facilities have a nameplate capacity of between 200 and 600 million liters per year.

Table 2: Estimated number of active corn ethanol production facilities in the United States

Annual capacity (millions of L)Active plants
0 – 20038
201 – 40092
401 – 60052
601 – 8006
801+6
Total194

Alcohol-to-jet conversion infrastructure​

Estimating plant size and requirement for alcohol-to-jet conversions is more difficult as there is only one commercially functioning alcohol-to-jet sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) conversion facility operational in the world. The 'Freedom Pines' facility operated by LanzaJet in the state of Georgia that produced its first commercial batch of sustainable aviation fuel in 2025 has an annual capacity of 10 million gallons (37.85 million liters) of sustainable aviation fuel 3. Extrapolating this to the annual production capacity of 49.3 billion liters of sustainable aviation fuel required for the domestic aviation fuel industry would require approximately 1300 such facilities, each with an approximate footprint of 260,000 square feet (6 acres). As a comparison, of the 124 fossil fuel oil and petroleum product facilities in operation in the United States, the average annual capacity is 8,401 million L per year, with the smallest facility refining 98 million L per year and the largest facility refining 36,620 million L per year 4. Using the average annual capacity of 8,401 million L per year, approximately 6 refining facilities would be required. However, a direct comparison cannot be made between these two industries as the refining processes are vastly different, but it does give a rough estimate of the scale required for the alcohol-to-jet conversion infrastructure required.

Sources​

Footnotes​

  1. Ethanol Producer Magazine. (n.d.). Ethanol plants list. Retrieved November 18, 2025, from https://ethanolproducer.com/plants/list/ethanol ↩ ↩2

  2. Balan, V. (2014). Current challenges in commercially producing biofuels from lignocellulosic biomass. ISRN Biotechnology, 2014, 463074. https://doi.org/10.1155/2014/463074 ↩

  3. LanzaJet. (2025). Freedom Pines Fuels. Retrieved from https://www.lanzajet.com/freedom-pines ↩

  4. U.S. Energy Information Administration. (2024). Top 10 U.S. refineries operable capacity. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-products/refining-crude-oil-refinery-rankings.php ↩