LanzaJet Appoints Sir David King, Global Climate Change and Science Leader, to its Board of Directors
LanzaJet Inc. appointed Sir David King as independent director on its Board of Directors. With this appointment, LanzaJet reinforces its commitment to climate change action and technology innovation across the globe.
Sir David King has been a leading voice in the global climate change debate for decades. The Founder & Chair of the Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge and current Senior Strategy Adviser to the President of Rwanda, Sir David served as the UK Government Chief Scientific Advisor from 2000 to 2007. Sir David also served as the Foreign Secretary's Special Representative for Climate Change from September 2013 until March 2017, where he worked with 165 Climate Change Attaches in UK Embassies worldwide. He was instrumental in creating the Energy Technologies Institute to heighten awareness of environmental science and served as the Founding Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment at Oxford to assist enterprises reset business practices to achieve net-zero emissions and sustainable development goals. Sir David has traveled widely to raise awareness and persuade governments to act on climate change, remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and restore parts of the climate system.
“Sir David stands out for his leadership on climate action, working with businesses and policymakers to strengthen efforts towards net-zero emissions,” said Jennifer Holmgren, chairperson of the LanzaJet Board and CEO of LanzaTech. “To make transformative change requires leaders looking at problems from different vantage points. With the addition of Sir David, our board reflects this nicely, with experts working together from science, policy, business and technology. We are thrilled to have him join us.”
Sir David has been an advocate for governments to make climate change a priority in crafting public policy and supporting technologies to transform world economies away from fossil fuels and toward a more sustainable low-carbon future.
"Sir David King has been a driving force on climate change for decades," said Jimmy Samartzis, LanzaJet CEO. "He is a leading scientific voice on climate science and a leader in advocating for the adoption of technological innovation that can remove greenhouse gases and reduce carbon at scale. All of which are important for LanzaJet to have a global impact. We look forward to Sir David's leadership in our company's growth in the years ahead."
Research and innovation will play a critical role in assisting the world's economies in meeting the objectives laid out in the Paris Agreement. This includes advances in carbon recycling technologies to turn greenhouse gasses into ethanol through LanzaTech's commercialized technology, and in turn, convert the ethanol into Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) made via the LanzaJet Alcohol to Jet (AtJ) Process. The process can use any source of sustainable ethanol, including, but not limited to, ethanol made from non-edible agricultural residues such as wheat straw and recycled pollution. Commercialization of AtJ has been years in the making, starting with the partnership between LanzaTech (which launched LanzaJet in June 2020) and the U.S Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).
"Advances created by companies such as LanzaJet will not only address climate change but will meaningfully enable future generations to enjoy our world and the travel that brings us all so much closer together," said Sir David King. "More importantly, these advances will enable countries to achieve their climate goals and increase their emission reduction targets. LanzaJet will play a critical role in this effort."
In February, British Airways announced it was investing in LanzaJet and offtaking SAF from LanzaJet's first commercial-scale plant in Georgia, USA. The deal with British Airways also involves LanzaJet conducting early-stage planning for a potential large-scale commercial SAF biorefinery in the UK. In 2018, through a long-standing partnership with LanzaTech, Virgin Atlantic used LanzaJet's SAF on a customer transatlantic flight from Florida to the UK. And in 2019, an All Nippon Airways (ANA) transpacific flight was fueled with LanzaJet's SAF. LanzaJet was launched in June 2020 following a decade of technology development and scale-up before spinning out from leading biotech company LanzaTech. LanzaJet's investors include LanzaTech, Suncor Energy Inc., Mitsui & Co., Ltd., and British Airways and participation from ANA. In addition to its biorefinery in Georgia, LanzaJet has work underway to develop four larger-scale plants operating from 2025 with a target production of 100 million gallons of SAF and renewable diesel made from sustainable feedstocks to support and enable the aviation sector's global decarbonization.
