Breakthrough Energy

When it comes to flying, every kilogram counts. The energy density of liquid fuels makes them difficult to replace, and batteries fall short for long-haul flight, but new approaches like engineered algae could deliver cleaner fuels without giving up the performance aviation depends on.

Phykion is developing hyper productive, oil-rich algae that can be grown using sunlight, CO2, and seawater, with the goal of producing an oil that can feed into today’s refining infrastructure and become sustainable aviation fuel for the aircraft already flying.

Lydian is developing smaller synthetic fuel plants designed to be quality controlled and mass manufactured. Its goal is to make cleaner liquid fuels more scalable and cost-effective for aviation, while building a model that can be replicated around the world.

Liquid fuels are amazing at what they do. They allow us to move planes across oceans and power heavy transportation. They underpin some of the largest industries in the world. Liquid fuels are hard to beat, but they still mostly come from fossil sources, so the opportunity to produce them differently (and better) is pretty unique. It’s also massive. At Breakthrough Energy, we back builders pursuing new pathways to hydrogen, carbon-based molecules, aviation fuels, and more. All with one thing in common: they must be able to scale and compete on cost in the real world. I wrote about a few of the innovators I’m excited about in this space, what we can learn from the industries that built today’s fuel system, and why the next generation of fuels could create some remarkable companies along the way.

The market an innovator chooses to serve inevitably shapes the company they have to build. Aviation is a demanding one. A technology breakthrough is only the beginning; the economics have to work, and the builders must earn the trust of customers who need enormous volumes of fuel delivered reliably, day after day. That’s the journey Lydian and Phykion are on as the first investments from our oneworld BEV Fund with incredible partners like Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, International Airlines Group (IAG), Cathay Pacific, Japan Airlines, Singapore Airlines, SKY express, and Boeing. Different technologies and teams with a shared opportunity and ambition of building companies capable of supplying sustainable aviation fuel at scale.

The world is going to fly a lot more, which means the next era of aviation will be shaped by clean technologies that can compete on cost and performance. Across the Breakthrough ecosystem, that opportunity takes on different forms: better liquid fuels for long-haul flight and electrification for shorter routes help tackle carbon emissions, while new tools pioneered by Contrails.org help planes avoid planet-warming contrails. We look at the aviation innovation taking off and how cleaner technologies offer a future for flight that’s more secure, resilient, and competitive—improving a system that billions of people rely on.