Hello and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to today's virtual non-deal roadshow. My name is Julia Perron, a virtual event moderator here at Renmark Financial Communications. On behalf of our team, we'd like to thank everyone in Houston and surrounding areas for joining us today for the presentation of Gevo Inc., trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol GEVO. Presenting today is Eric Frey, Vice President of Finance and Strategy, and Leke Agiri, Chief Financial Officer, will be joining us for the fireside chat and Q&A session. The presentation will last approximately 20- 25 minutes and will be followed by a formal Q&A session, which you can participate in using the chat box on the top right-hand corner of your screen. With that, I will hand it over to Eric.
Great, thank you, Julia. As Julia mentioned, I'm Eric Frey, VP of Finance and Strategy here at Gevo. That's stock ticker GEVO, trading on the NASDAQ. I just want to remind everyone that you can find a lot more information on our investor relations portal on our website at www.gevo.com. We have past corporate presentations, virtual fireside chats like this under the past events heading down there. We've saved those recordings so you can find a lot more information. Of course, you can look at our SEC filings as well. Also, before we get started, I just want to remind you of our forward-looking statements. We may make forward-looking statements, and there can be no guarantee that actual results will match forward-looking expectations. Take a look at our risk factors as well that are listed in our SEC filings, like our 10K.
Before we have our virtual fireside chat with our CFO, which is the purpose of this virtual presentation, I just wanted to give, for those of you who are not already familiar with our story, an overview of where we sit in the industry and what it is we do and what we're looking to achieve in just a couple of minutes. Then we'll have a chat with our CFO. Gevo is a developer, a leading developer of cost-effective renewable hydrocarbons and chemicals that are drop-in to existing infrastructure. There are a number of companies out there and industries that are looking to reduce carbon emissions. Our goal, as we sit in this industry, is to, one, make them cost-effective, so cheap and affordable and scalable. Number two, that we make a drop-in product.
We make liquid and similar molecules and fuels that are fungible with fossil fuels today so that you don't have to convert a truck or a jet engine to electric. You can use these fuels and mix it with fossil fuels and get a lower carbon emission result. We also use proven commercial technologies like fermentation. In the U.S., we have an enormous ethanol industry, which is based on fermentation of plant sugars. To that point, where do we focus on in terms of feedstock? We focus on plant sugars using existing technologies. We tweak those technologies, though, in a way that's novel. We put together those existing technologies that are scalable in a way that gives you this low carbon result with a drop-in fuel. We have hundreds of patents for those proprietary facility designs. That's how Gevo is attempting to address the market.
This is an overview of our asset footprint. What do we have? I'll just point out—I went to the wrong slide here. There we are. I'm so sorry. There, hopefully it will stay on this slide.
Oh, sorry, Eric. What slide are you on currently? I think we have a bit of a disconnect between you and the slides. If you could just tell me, I'll move the slides for you.
Oh, sure. It should be slide four that says Gevo's footprint at the title.
Excellent, thank you.
OK, thanks, Julia. Our headquarters is in Englewood, Colorado. We have a demonstration facility in Minnesota. That's box number two that we're in the process of selling. In the past, Gevo has used a facility in Silsbee, Texas, to make alcohol-to-jet and biooctane fuels. Box number four is our flagship Greenfield project called ATJ-60. That's in South Dakota, which is in the financing stage. Box number five, we have a dairy manure renewable natural gas operation in Iowa. We also have a wholly owned subsidiary called Verity, which makes carbon tracking software that we are deploying for customers who do things like ethanol and soybean crush so they can track carbon end-to-end through their value chain.
Finally, last but not least, in North Dakota, we have a low-carbon ethanol facility, which is very unique because there we have operating carbon capture, which is doing over 160,000 metric tons per year of biogenic CO2. That's CO2 that came from the atmosphere that's being pumped a mile underground. If we could go to slide five, please. Thank you. Those things that I just showed you are the ingredients. Today, they make fuels and chemicals that people can use in existing infrastructure. Today, they reduce carbon footprint. Tomorrow, they're the ingredients for even more valuable value-added products that are in even greater demand and less supply, like sustainable aviation fuel. The demand globally and in the U.S. for sustainable aviation fuel is growing. It is not currently being met by existing supply. Most of the future supply will need to come from abundant feedstocks, in particular plant sugar.
That's that ATJ bar right there. That's the alcohol-to-jet process that comes from plant sugars because plant sugars are so abundant and scalable. Next slide, please. What's really important, and this is just a point I want to emphasize from what I said earlier, is that this alcohol-to-jet process is very effective at making sustainable aviation fuel because it leverages nature, because it leverages the work that nature does for you in the microorganisms that do fermentation. What this is showing, the green box at the bottom left there, is our cash cost of production estimated from using this alcohol-to-jet process. It overlaps with those blue circles, which is a scatter plot of the price of jet fuel, fossil jet fuel, at different crude oil prices.
What you can see is that at the beginning of our industry, we believe that we can make sustainable aviation fuel at a cash cost of production per gallon that's already competitive with fossil fuels. That's what gets us really excited, that we can do things that both reduce carbon footprint and do it cost-effectively using things that the Midwest U.S. are good at, including rural communities in this process and rewarding them for doing things like reducing fertilizer and reducing land use. With that, that's a brief overview of our company and what we do. Again, you can find a lot more information on our website. I want to turn to the real agenda here, which is to have a chat with Leke, our Chief Financial Officer. Julia, if you don't mind bringing up Leke. Great.
Maybe we can just start, Leke, with your background and how you got here.
Thank you, Eric. First of all, let me start by thanking everyone for joining this discussion live and for those that are going to access the video at some point in the future as well. Thank you for your time. Again, my name is Leke Agiri. I'm the Chief Financial Officer for Gevo. I've been here at Gevo for about three years in a number of different functions. I started out leading our debt capital raise originally, and then morphed into raising all of our capital raises, debt and equity for our projects, and then ultimately started gaining more responsibility in terms of our operating finance and accounting functions. That has led to me effectively being the head of our finance organization at this time. We've had, over the last three years, as you know, Eric, some exciting milestones that have occurred that we've worked on together.
Some of those, just to highlight, are what you mentioned, the acquisition of our ethanol and CCS assets. That's tremendous for the future of Gevo. We were invited to the underwriting phase for the U.S. Department of Energy Loan Programs Office for the ATJ-60 project in Lake Preston. Ultimately, that led us to the conditional commitment approval last year as well for that project. We've worked on refinancing our RNG facility bonds, the tax-exempt bonds, as well sometime in 2023. We've been monetizing our tax credits for all of our operating assets. By no means has it been a fun three years to be a part of Gevo. I just want to, again, stress and thank all of our, call it, our Gevo employees or Gevo resources that have helped us achieve this milestone. More importantly, too, by no means have we accomplished this by ourselves.
I would like to personally thank all of our partners for making that happen. Prior to Gevo, I spent a couple of years with Bank of America structuring tax equity for the most part, and then some term debts as well. During my time with Bank of America, I focused on a lot of renewable technologies, so solar, wind, battery storage. Over the course of about two years, I worked on a transaction of about $1 billion there. That was a really exciting time as well. Prior to that, I worked briefly for a solar and LNG developer, raising sponsor equity, tax equity, construction debts, and then permanent debt facilities as well. Prior to that time, working with developers, I worked over a decade with Enolg as. I worked for Anadarko Petroleum Corporation.
I spent about five years in corporate development, executing inorganic growth strategies, which is effectively the buying and selling of oil and gas assets, identifying opportunities on the market that make sense to be acquired or effectively monetizing non-strategic assets. I moved into international operations. I worked for International Business Services, where at the time I was managing and evaluating non-operated asset positions in six countries for the company. That introduced me to international finance and accounting and effectively led me to pivot into project finance work for Anadarko. At Anadarko, we were successful in originating and executing the debt capital raise at the time of about $14 billion -$15 billion for Mozambique LNG. The project capital was originated from export credit agencies and commercial lenders internationally.
All of that was effectively coming to a close in 2019 when Anadarko was publicly, as most people might be aware, acquired at the time by Occidental Petroleum after a bidding war with Chevron. That was a really, really interesting time for just the industry, I guess, and Anadarko. With that being said, I think hopefully that picture of my career over the last two decades, it's clear that I have the right skill set and capabilities to service Gevo's, call it, strategic financial Chief Financial Officer, especially around the aspects of optimizing the operational financial performance of operating assets, prudent capital allocation for not just our operating assets, but of course, our growth projects. How do we execute the acceleration of our growth projects? We do all of that with the priority of keeping in mind fiscal discipline as well.
All that should translate into measurable shareholder value, which is the foremost, call it, fiduciary duty that we have for the management team. I'm really excited to have this conversation and to be a part of this discussion, Eric.
Great, thanks, Leke. I talked earlier about the big challenge of making energy, making more energy, making it reducing emissions because there's a big market for that. There's demand for that, both in the U.S. and globally, both on the voluntary markets and on the regulatory side where there are mandates and so on. Making it so that it's always there when you need it, Gevo is trying to address that challenge. How does Gevo's approach, in your mind, make that possible? What gets you excited about being here and having your leadership role?
Eric, it's pretty simple. I think in terms of what keeps me or gets me excited here at Gevo, it's all of the initiatives, the exciting initiatives that we're working on. They are groundbreaking. I think it's fair to say that we have a lot of exciting things in front of us. We are going to, most of the time, be maybe one of the first parties in the world to execute some of these transactions or to execute some of these projects. That's really, really exciting. I should say the fact that we have the right resources internally, so from a human capital perspective, and then we have partners that can help us achieve that, that gives me a lot of confidence that we can actually achieve our goal. It's really exciting from that perspective.
How are we uniquely positioned to actually navigate through this industry challenge that you're referring to? You kind of touched on it when you provided the overview. Let me summarize as well. We are making drop-in fuels from renewable sources. These products that we're making are competitive to fossil-based fuels. The keyword there is the fact that we are competitive because we also deliver the additional parameter of reduced greenhouse gas emissions for our products. With that sort of product, that's really a niche product, we are also making our processes very unique but scalable. Our ability to actually scale our processes and to have a lot of different use cases for it to grow our company is also a unique opportunity for us as well.
When you add on to the fact that all of our projects that we have in our portfolio, they align very well with the energy security of the U.S. It aligns with the energy policy of, call it, the federal governments across the various parties. I think it's very clear too, or very important to make that distinction. You tag on to the fact that we are stimulating rural economies. I think you mentioned that earlier as well. When you put all that ingredient together, all these specific project characteristics that we have in our projects, I think it just makes it very unique for Gevo, for our projects to be successful. From that perspective, I think we have a competitive advantage that really is going to serve us well, not only just in the short term, but actually in the medium and long term as well.
I think we are really positioned to deliver tangible or measurable shareholder values in the long run.
We talked a little bit about high level, what our objectives are, and our vision for achieving those objectives at a high level, feedstocks, technology, and that type of thing. Getting a little bit more specific, in the last 12 months, as you look back, what has changed? As you look forward, where do you see us going next?
Yeah, no, it's great. As I was just articulating, I think Gevo is at a pivotal stage now where a lot of our aspirations or goals that we've communicated over the years, we are now execution-focused. Some of those executions are now going to be manifested in our financial performance that's going to be available publicly, as you're seeing for 2025 and going forward. That's really, really exciting. I should say our philosophy is acceleration of the execution. For example, as folks that have pulled up our financial statement, all of our revenue, for example, of 2024 is around $17 million. Our first quarter revenue alone is $29 million. Because of the acquisitions that we've made in 2025, the ethanol and CCS asset recurring revenues are only going to grow substantially from where we are today.
Our ability to discuss about optimization of operating asset margin expansion, ability to actually generate positive EBITDA, generate profitability, generate cash flows from operations, those are now tangible goals, right? The question becomes, how do we fund a lot of our strategic projects, a lot of our capital projects that we're working on? Of course, there is going to be project financing. We're raising capital from the U.S. Department of Energy Loan Programs Office to do, for instance, ATJ-30. We're going to be raising project-level equity to balance up the capital stack. What's important is with Gevo, as a corporation, having the pathway to actually generate operating cash flows, we can fund and accelerate the commercializations of the strategic project from our own cash flows as well, which effectively should also accelerate value creation for our shareholders. That's changed. That's really exciting.
I think folks that truly do follow Gevo, they should be excited, as I am. I think it's just a unique time for us to really start seeing a tangible difference in terms of our financial performance.
Great. You know one of the boxes, the sort of eight boxes that was on that slide of Gevo's footprint and assets, there's a whole bunch of those. Most of those are driving our results that you mentioned. One of them is our project, our future Greenfield project in South Dakota, where we have a conditional commitment from the U.S. Department of Energy for a loan, a loan guarantee. Can you give us an update on that?
Yeah. $3.6 billion when you include the capitalized interest during construction. We are still in the process of marching towards financial close. We are engaged with the U.S. Department of Energy Loan Programs Office, working through that path. What we cannot disclose, as hopefully it's consistent with what we've said historically, so it should not be any surprise for any of our audiences, is we cannot give a definitive timeline of execution. We are not, or we cannot do that. It's a requirement of the DOE process. I can assure you, we're engaged with the LPO, and we're doing everything we can to be able to accelerate our ability to get to financial close. The LPO is engaged with us. It's a two-way street. We cannot ignore, obviously, what's taking shape in 2025 with the new administration, which has been great.
As I mentioned, our project aligns with the energy policy. In fact, there typically is just a transition phase within any administration in terms of bringing resources up to speed to be able to effectively transact. There is that that's there, and that is very common. It's not unique to any administration coming in. It's just a natural process that you see from a transition perspective. I would also say, I think our path to get into financial close for that transaction, it's real. There are some interdependencies in terms of, for instance, the Summit pipeline, where if and how the timing that happens. The good thing for us is we have a pathway to arrive at financial close that does not depend effectively, fully on just the Summit pipeline being completed. There is a pathway there.
I should say our plan A is to be able to utilize the Summit pipeline to effectively sequester our CO2, our biogenic CO2, from that ATJ-60 facility. Pathway to closing is there, but we don't want to minimize our desire or need to see the Summit pipeline be completed. It's quite strategic for our ATJ60 project.
Yeah, and I just remind folks who are listening, if you want to look at our near-term, more near-term EBITDA growth, what we just talked about is long term, and it's very strategic. In addition to that, we have other locations where we're looking to deploy our proprietary and patented ATJ process technologies. One of those is in North Dakota. If you look at our near-term EBITDA growth strategy, we have a slide in our corporate investor presentation that's available on our website. We've talked about it in our business update earlier this year. We talked about it in our one-Q earnings, what that near-term looks like. It's helpful to kind of put things into those two buckets. What Leke was just talking about was one of our long-term growth projects that's a huge enabler for us.
There's also the near-term, which is all the other things that were on that slide that I showed of Gevo's footprint. I think, Leke, unless there was something that we—go ahead.
No, I was actually just going to pile on. I think that's a very great hat. Just to add to that, the pathway to, as I mentioned before, our technology, our alcohol-to-jet platform is very scalable. We are deploying as much modular technique that we can replicate, not even just at our project sites, but our aspiration is to be able to enable all the developers to construct or have ATJ facilities at their facilities as well or their locations as well. The significance of that is we have the pathway, as Eric was just describing, to commence and accelerate the development of alcohol-to-jet project at our Richardson, North Dakota facility. We control a number of the key parameters to actually enable the project to be accelerated and to happen at a timeline that could potentially be even at a faster pace than our ATJ-60 project.
By no means are we suggesting that ATJ-60 is not a priority. It's just as we are a prudent, or call it, we're heavily focused on allocating capital and utilizing them effectively for the benefit of our shareholders, it has to be part of our calculus as to how we accelerate ATJ-30 at this time because the value that is going to derive or deliver to Gevo is going to be quite attractive. From that perspective, we're really excited about that project as well. Hopefully, at some point, we'll be sharing more details as to how those commercializations of that site are going on from an ATJ-30 perspective.
Excellent. Thank you, Leke. It appears we're having technical difficulties. Eric just dropped off. Oh, he's back. Sorry about that to our audience. We will now continue with the Q&A. Thank you both for the presentation. Your first question is, what is the timeline for ATJ30-60 retrofit at Red Trail? Is NZ1 really possible without a pipeline? If not, when do we make a final decision to scrap it?
Yeah, so I can take this question. Regarding ATJ-60, and I already touched on it, there is a pathway to actually get ATJ-60 done without requiring the Summit pipeline. By no means, our preference is to have the Summit pipeline. I think I can leave that response there. In terms of ATJ-30, we are actively working on our engineering design and our engagement with the EPC contractors to be able to commence the project as quickly as possible. Based on where we are today, it's very possible to say maybe we can arrive at a point where we might be able to start construction sometime next year. I say that with a lot of caution, right? Because, again, we still have to go through the engineering, get the cost for the project to be finalized, and then issue a final investment decision for that project to go forward.
There is also the angle of capital raise. I'm very bullish on the alcohol-to-jet project in North Dakota. The economics are going to be, it's going to meet the hurdle for us to raise capital. Also, the fact that we control a lot of the key parameters, for example, sequestration. We have CCS assets at that location. That is also something that enables the project to go forward. We're really excited about that path forward. I would couch the response in terms of when the project is going to get done. The first key step is let's get to a financial investment decision. That impacts when the project is going to get done.
Excellent. Thank you for elaborating on that, Leke. Moving on to your next question, viewer asks, what are Gevo's plans for SAF while it's not producing SAF in the U.S.? Will it produce SAF in other countries for other companies, or will it have subsidiaries in other countries? Which countries, or will we ultimately produce SAF in the U.S.?
I think we are primarily focused on, of course, our projects here in the U.S., but we have commercial discussions going on for us to be able to achieve the same outcome in Europe. Specific details around what those projects are and the countries that they are, they are not at a phase or they are not public information at this time. We want them to remain non-public because they are strategic. What I would revert back to the audience asking the question is, stay tuned. There will be more information coming to bear or publicly at the right time. We are working on SAF development, not just in the U.S., but globally.
Thank you for that response. Your next question, viewer asks, can you provide any update on Verity?
I'll pass that to you, Eric.
Great. Yeah, so we said last year that our goals were to deploy the product and get to first revenue. Last year, we did get to first revenue at Verity. If you look at our disclosure, we have an other income line in our 10-K and our 1Q. That includes software as a service. We've started to build revenue from that. We have several customers where we're deploying the software, not least of which would be ourselves. At Gevo, North Dakota, we're deploying the Verity software right now there so that we can better track and trace the product all the way through the value chain, from the field through grain elevators, through a plant processing to the customer that's using that fuel or voluntary customers globally that may want to purchase a virtual attribute.
A virtual attribute is where you say, you know, we sequestered this many tons of carbon dioxide a mile underground. It's biogenic. You can list that on a registry to ensure no double counting. Global customers that want to reduce their carbon footprint, especially software-type companies, don't have a lot of tools to reduce their carbon footprint except to purchase the right to claim those carbon credits that other people are doing and basically retire it against their own ESG reports. All that stuff is stuff that Verity is useful for. We're deploying it. We're in the process of copy-edit-paste. There's a lot of work to be done on software of this type because the value chain in this industry is very complicated. That's a great thing for us because that means that customers have a very complicated problem to solve.
We can help them solve it with a push button software.
Excellent. Thank you for shedding light on that, Eric. Your next question, viewer asks, does the recent bill change the necessity for a pipeline at Gevo, South Dakota?
I don't think it does. I think the pipeline requirements, irrespective of the outcome of the bill, are preferred for our project. I keep coming back to that point because it's a key point for us. The bill, the big beautiful bill, has done some positive things for our operating assets. As folks on the call might be aware, in terms of 45Z, our operating assets do qualify for 45Z. In fact, we did file an 8-K for monetizing 45Z for our Gevo, North Dakota assets. That's exciting. However, from a SAF perspective, our long-term products that we are in the process of commercializing, that bill also did reduce the 45Z credit generation per gal for SAF from $1.75 to $1.
That means the economics of those projects, which the good thing is because of the expiration date of 45Z anyway, a lot of our project is not dependent on it. Our economics, we designed them for resiliency around government support of 45Z. Our project, even though those 45Z implications or 45Z has been reduced for them, is not going to have material implication on our ability for us to execute and hopefully raise capital to get those projects done.
Excellent. Thank you for your insight.
One of the things I just wanted to mention, can you all hear me OK?
Yes, sorry about that. Yes.
One of the things I just want to emphasize for folks who may be hearing the Gevo story for the first time is, you know, when you look at companies that are trying to reduce emissions, they can kind of encounter a world that's divided into two camps, a world that cares about cost-effective energy and making more energy, things like jet fuel, things like diesel, things like natural gas and ethanol. Then there's a world of folks that care about reducing emissions and sustainability. There's not as much overlap as we wish there was between those two different worlds. Gevo is a really interesting company. We think our approach really bridges that divide in a really interesting way. The reason I say that, I'll just give you two quick facts to help you understand that.
In the previous administration, the Inflation Reduction Act passed a number of clean energy tax credits. The current administration just passed a bill, a budget bill that extends the tax credits that are most important to us that are related to biofuel, in particular the 45Z tax credit that Leke just mentioned. We've been saying for a long time that we appeal to a broad spectrum of folks who want to see more energy, who want to address industries where it's impractical to switch to electric or at least to switch the entire fleet to electric. What are the other options? At the same time, address market demand to reduce emissions in a meaningful way. I think that that is clear evidence that we're actually doing that. That's something that makes our approach, I think, a little bit unique.
Excellent. Thank you both for sharing your comments on that. Your next question, viewer asks, why is Gevo North a profitable ethanol plant? What's unique about its operations that drives profitability compared to industry? What are your plans to increase gross margin and operating margins on the cost side? What are your plans, if any?
Yeah, so I think in terms of operational performance, what's unique about our ethanol facility in North Dakota, first, the obvious angle is the fact that we have this sequestration infrastructure appended to it. From an operational perspective, having our own ability to sequester biogenic CO2 improves, call it, the economics or the revenue streams that our molecule from that facility actually can generate. How is that the case? As Eric was just talking about, the fact that one molecule of our ethanol probably has a larger carbon value associated with it, which can come from actually going to the voluntary markets or transportation markets to get those. We also have the ability to generate, as I was just alluding to earlier, 45Z credits with those molecules, a large amount, well, a good-sized amount of 45Z credits.
When you couple those factors together, our ethanol facility will, by almost any math you do, be much more profitable than a traditional ethanol facility in the country. In terms of what are we doing to further expand margins, of course, after the integration of those assets this year, our number one priority is to ensure we integrate those assets very well, make sure that we don't accelerate any implementation of strategies that can artificially deflate margins. Starting next year, in terms of operational measures that include, call it, derivative instruments that can help us be able to expand margins, that has to be on the table. Are there sourcing strategies around the feedstock for us to deploy or to evaluate? That has to be on the table. Are there ways for us to even man and operate the facilities? I think those are just fair questions.
We believe our facility is efficiently running at this time. Like any organization, we always have to ask those questions to be able just to continue to improve the economics around the facility. I couldn't be more excited about the facility. Our facility is uniquely positioned to do very, very well than most facilities in the country.
Excellent. Thank you, Leke, for your response. Moving on to your next question, viewer commented, thank you for the presentation and congratulations to Leke on the new role. How does the outcome on 45Z in the BBB impact Gevo's capital allocation options for North Dakota? There is a 45Z extension, but also a cut to SAF credit to $1 per gal. Does this make an investment in low-carbon ethanol expansion and utilizing the 45Q CCS credit more attractive than an investment in ATJ-30?
That's a very good question. I'd mentioned effectively those same parameters earlier. Yes, 45Z, and Eric also alluded to it, was extended from expiration date of 2027 to 2029 as part of the passing of the bill. It's exciting, and you're right, for ethanol facilities. Ethanol facilities like ours, that's a very key differentiation that every ethanol facility has the ability to and the expertise that Gevo actually brings to bear to implement strategies to lower carbon intensity score of our molecules. Because we have that, we can optimize, call it, our proceeds from 45Z for our ethanol asset. Because we can do that, the opportunities around what do we do to expand our production, that has to be a natural question that we're asking. Of course, we've asked the questions, and that's going to be part of our play. Yes, I think the bill naturally incentivizes that thinking.
We are in a good place to be, we are in a strategic place to be able to move forward and execute. As it however relates to our sustainable aviation fuel project, as I mentioned earlier, technically, the longer the expiration date of 45Z, the more our projects, because of the execution timeline, our sustainable aviation fuel projects will benefit from it, right, even though it's a reduced dollar per gallon amount. Our projects, our alcohol-to-jet projects, the way they're designed, they're engineered, we already factor into our economics the ability for us not to be a benefit from 45Z. From that perspective, yes, we would have liked to see the dollar per gallon for sustainable aviation fuel to be left at $1.75. I think it's going to incentivize if there's a pathway for short-term production, absolutely. What's more important, actually, is the tenor of the 45Z for alcohol-to-jet projects.
Because of the development timeline for these projects, the long lead capital and construction timeline for the projects, that is how you are actually going to be able to raise capital with the existence of 45Z for an alcohol-to-jet project. From a fiscal incentive perspective, 45Z extension, similar to what you have for 45Q, is actually going to stimulate additional investments or capital going into alcohol-to-jet projects versus what we have now. As I said, we sort of designed our process to account for the less-than-surplus 45Z environment for our alcohol-to-jet project, and they still deliver returns that meet the capital raise hurdle.
Excellent. Thank you, Leke, for shedding light on that. Moving on to your next question. What are the conditions that are currently holding up the U.S. Department of Energy Loan Programs Office loan from being approved, if there are any?
Yeah, just to correct the narrative a little bit, we have the conditional commitment approval already. What that means is, effectively, the Treasury Department, the Federal Financing Bank, and the U.S. Department of Energy, they've actually approved us, conditionally approved us for that loan facility. We are working to address conditions precedent, negotiate closing, definitive closing documents so that we can actually start drawing down on the facility and commence the construction of the facility. As I was explaining earlier, you've got circumstances in 2025 that I think it's common for any change of administration. There are going to have to be changes of team, the learning curve. I can assure you that we're doing everything we can to accelerate our pathway to financial growth. From that perspective, I think this is the natural course of any financing.
We have to stay on the treadmill, satisfy all the processes that we or the conditions precedent that we're supposed to, and then we can arrive at financial close after negotiation of the closing documents.
Excellent. Thank you, Leke. We're coming up to your last three questions for today. Your next question, viewer asks, since 45Z was law as of January 1, 2025, shouldn't Gevo be able to retroactively take 45Z credits from January 1 onwards? If not, then why?
We are. There is a Form 637 approved by the IRS that entities that can generate 45Z have to apply for and get before the end of 2024 that Gevo has done for or to operating assets already. Our recently acquired ethanol facility and our RNG facility qualify for generation of 45Z effectively from January 1, 2025. However, because we closed the acquisition of the ethanol asset January 31 or January 30, we start generating 45Z credits for the ethanol facility starting January 31, 2025. The prior owners of the ethanol facility, they own the credit generation for the first 30 days. As you probably saw our 8-K that was filed this Monday, we are monetizing credit generated since January 31 of this year for the ethanol facility. That's what we're monetizing. We are going to continue monetizing credit generated throughout all of 2025 for RNG facility.
Yes, we have inventory, quote unquote, inventory of 45Zs that was generated that we will be monetizing, and the cash will be effectively received over the course of the rest of the year.
Excellent. Thank you for that response. Moving on to your next question, viewer asks, how will the suspension of the tax credits by the Biden administration affect you? When does Gevo expect to be profitable?
Our narrative has not changed. Just to also be clear about my last response in terms of monetization of credits, our goal, I should correct myself, our goal is to monetize and receive those cash by the end of the year. Just to be clear, now to this question in terms of pathway to profitability, our messaging, our target has not changed. We've communicated historically. We are targeting our pathway to actually be EBITDA neutral, for us to start generating greater than zero of EBITDA. Once we achieve that pathway, we can start working towards true profitability. As I started with my commentary, for you to be profitable, you've got to be EBITDA positive. You've got to generate taxable income. You've got to generate operating income. We are operating cash flow, I mean. We've got all of the right thinking ahead of us.
Our goal would be let's be EBITDA neutral, which I believe, based on a lot of the execution that we've already set in motion this year, that we are still on target to achieve our goal of being EBITDA neutral.
Excellent. Thank you, Leke. Your last question for today, viewer asks, how much would ATJ-30 cost roughly? Are we still waiting on the Summit pipeline for any progress to be made on ATJ-60?
Yeah, I think I already addressed the question. Relating to the cost of ATJ-30, that's competitive information. We can't divert that at this time.
Oh, it appears we have lost Leke. Eric, are you still there?
Yep, I'm still here. I can pick up where Leke left off while he rejoins.
Yeah, sorry about that.
No worries. Yeah, I think you pretty much already heard Leke's answer. We're not disclosing the cost of ATJ-30 at this time. We're still in the process of the feasibility and the engineering, really, of doing that. What I would say is, this is the important thing. At North Dakota, we have hundreds of acres of site that we own. The ethanol plant occupies only a fraction of that total footprint. We have hundreds of thousands, in fact, perhaps up to a million tons per year of pore space, right? That's the rock, the geology about a mile under the surface where you can store CO2. There's a very supportive community, a great community of farmers who are up there. Excuse me one second.
I think that it's a great site, and there's lots of options to do things, both big and small, ATJ-30, but all the way down to road improvements and grain silo expansion, that type of thing. We're looking at all that, but it's too early to say what the capital cost of an ATJ-30 would be. You can expect it would be significantly lower than the ATJ-60 for just two basic reasons. One is we're not building the ethanol plant, that's already built. Two is it's smaller. It's about 1/2 the size. It would be substantially smaller than ATJ-60, but the exact cost is something that we're still working on.
Perfect. Thank you, Eric, for all your answers today. Thank you to our viewers who submitted questions. If you did not get a chance to submit your question, feel free to reach out to the appropriate account manager here at Renmark. This concludes our presentation for today. Before we go, I'll turn it back over to you, Eric, for final remarks.
Great, thanks, Julia. If Leke rejoins, I'll give him a chance to say goodbye. For those of you who may be new to the Gevo story or for those of you who know us really well already, I just want to emphasize a couple of key points. One is that we think a company that's already tangibly reducing emissions, which is our mission. Last quarter, it was over 100,000 metric tons of carbon sequestered or avoided by using our products, RNG, low-carbon ethanol, and carbon capture. We have a base business that's grown a lot since last year. If you extrapolate that to the end of this year, maybe we'll do hundreds of thousands, basically, of tons of carbon sequestration or avoidance, which is the equivalent to converting a pretty tangible, it would be the emissions equivalent to doing a whole bunch of electric vehicles.
We're doing it with drop-in products that work in existing infrastructure, things that are hard to electrify, like big trucks and, in the future, jet aircraft. That's number one. Number two, we're growing revenue and EBITDA. We have targets to grow EBITDA a lot in the near term, even before we do things like the long-term DOE loan. Oh, am I still here? I just got a message.
Yeah, Leke Agiri has joined. Would you like me to join him on screen with you, Eric?
Yeah, that'd be great. Leke, I was just giving final remarks, and I'll turn it back to you. The third thing I want to, so we're reducing carbon footprint using drop-in fuels and existing technologies. We're growing revenue and EBITDA. The third thing I want to emphasize is we have a lot of support across the spectrum of communities, states, countries, whether you're Canada or Europe or the United States, the last U.S. administration or the current U.S. administration, all those have shown support for the type of fuels that we make. I think when you take those three ingredients, that makes us a unique story. That's why Leke and I are excited to be here. Leke, maybe I'll turn it over to you to give any final remarks.
First of all, I apologize for dropping off there. I'm not really sure what happened from a technical difficulties perspective. Just to probably summarize a lot of discussions today, I think Gevo is on a great trajectory. A lot of the historical messages, aspirations, goals that were communicated, we are on an execution-focused mode. Effectively, those are going to translate into financial performance that we are going to be very proud of as a management team. Of course, as Eric mentioned, we are very excited to be a part of this journey. Our assets, our projects, our strategic attributes that we have here and our capabilities enable us to be able to actually achieve these outcomes. I couldn't be more excited to see when we actually achieve those goals and they start being reflected in our financial statements.
From that perspective, I want to thank everyone again for joining these discussions with us in person or live. Those that would download this video and take a look at it, please feel free to reach out to our investor relations team if you have any questions. We look forward to subsequent interactions with you from our routine business update perspective, but also more importantly, in a couple of weeks when we have our earnings call. Until then, we wish you well. Thank you.
Thank you again, Eric and Leke, for the presentation. Once again, this was Gevo Inc., trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol GEVO. Thank you again to everyone in Houston and surrounding areas for joining us today. The playback for this virtual non-deal roadshow will be available on our website 24- 48 hours after the presentation under the VNDR Library tab. Stay tuned for other presentations in your area. Thank you and see you next time.