Hello and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to today's virtual Non-Deal Roadshow. My name is Noella Alexander-Young, virtual event moderator here at Renmark Financial Communications. On behalf of our team, we'd like to thank everyone in Atlanta 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 Patrick Gruber, CEO and Executive Chair of the Board; Paul Bloom, President of Gevo; and Eric Frey, Vice President of Strategy. The presentation will last approximately 20 to 25 minutes and will be followed by a Q&A session for which you can participate using the chat box in the top right-hand corner of your screen. With that being said, I will now hand it over to Pat.
Great. Thanks for joining us today. The primary topic of this meeting is actually the transition of management. This means that I am the outgoing CEO and Paul Bloom is the incoming CEO. I wanted you all to have the chance to hear from Paul directly about what he sees and why he likes it here. You know, Gevo has been a really fun road for me and I love this company a lot. It's really an important company. You know, I bet my whole professional career pretty much on it and my life savings on it. So I'm entrusting that to my team in the future to carry it forward.
You know, when we look at, you get nostalgic in moments like this where you look back and say, "Well, you know, when I came here in 2007, it was all about this dream, actually, now making reality, the turning into making hydrocarbons, the big fuels, the jet fuel, gasoline, and diesel fuel for renewable resources, but coming from alcohols." We've been pursuing that ever since. What it takes to be successful is you have to be able to have a technology that's outstanding, really low cost. Guess what? We've achieved that. It works. You have to be able to sell all the attributes, the carbon. Well, guess what? That's starting to happen now. Finally, that's taken a lot longer than I ever would have dreamed. But now we're learning to monetize the carbon value itself. That's a big deal.
And Paul Bloom has been a leader in making that happen. He's been with us for five years. And of course, you know, the jet fuels all have to be drop-in. You've got to use existing infrastructure. One of the things that is astounding in what we're doing here is the scale. The scale is immense and the opportunity is absolutely immense. We've done well and I'm pleased with our acquisition of the plant in Gevo North Dakota. Our timing appears to be really, really good. And we needed that. It's low carbon ethanol and that's the feedstock to make jet fuel. So I've built a team. They're really, really strong. Paul Bloom has been with us for five years already. I've had my eye on Paul for a long, long time. And because Paul had a job, you know, he's got a background.
He'll tell you more about it in a minute. But you know, he's got a chemist, a broad business background, been in a lot of new businesses. He's operated businesses, had businesses succeed. There's other ones that he had to work through that were struggling businesses. He's got a lot of experience and he's a really capable person. I'm glad to have him. I'm glad that, you know, I've had a long look at him and how he operates. I'm glad to be able to turn the company over to him. I honestly could not think of a better person on earth to take over this company and lead it. The thing is, for me, people wonder why I'm leaving now. It's like, look, I'm going to be 66 years old here this summer. 66.
You know, a few years ago, I had a bout with cancer and I was like, that made me rethink about how I want to do things in my life. This company's at a super stable place. It's solid. The cash flow's building. We've got good cash in the balance sheet. It's about execution, building the business, growing. The team is in place. I got a guy like Paul who's an outstanding leader. I want to see what he does. He's good. He's really good. And I will be around. I'm the Executive Chairman and I'll be Chairman later. And I'm here to help in whatever way I can. Paul's team is good. And I'm proud of what's here. And I'm not going away. So I think we do now is I'm going to introduce you to Paul Bloom, the incoming CEO of Gevo.
Paul, I think you should start and talk about your background a little bit and tell people why you're qualified. I'm putting him on the spot a little bit. Sorry, Paul. Tell people why you're qualified to be CEO of GEVO.
Thanks, Pat. First, you know, let me, big thanks to Pat. Big thanks to our board and the confidence that they put in me and the honor really to lead the company to the next chapter. This is fantastic. Like Pat said, Pat and I actually have known each other for a long time. Pat and I actually have very similar backgrounds, right? We're both technology guys at heart. I'm a chemist by training, just like Pat. Grew up in the Midwest and really focused on, spent most of our careers, you know, developing bio-based technology all the way from the laboratory all the way through commercialization and really making them, turning it from an idea into a profitable business. So this is exactly the path that Gevo's been on. Obviously, we've had a transformational year last year.
But, you know, that background that I got, great education at places, starting actually at Valspar, was when I got out of school, I was a paint chemist, right? So making things like paint, coatings, a lot of house paint, that type of stuff. Great education on what are all the raw materials that have to go in to make finished products and make them really good and last for 30, 40, 50 years on your house, on your automotive applications and protect those assets that we have. So great education there. But I needed more chemistry in my life. Went back to graduate school and got a degree in chemistry and then joined ADM. And ADM was really just a fantastic place to work. I can't say enough good things about ADM and my time there. I got to develop early on.
I got involved in a lot of joint ventures, things that the company was doing, both on food and some on feed, some on industrial products and on fuels. So I got to get this broad experience, kind of food, feed, fuels, and industrials and across the board. And when you listen to Gevo, exactly the same things that we're doing, right? We can't help but make feed at the same time and food at the same time that we're making fuels. And that's just part of our focus. But all back to agriculture, right? How do we turn the bushels and work with farmers and to make this the best? So that's been the history of my career. I got to do a few really cool things, taking technology from the lab to commercial scale.
One of them was to, we had co-products, just like you heard Pat, monetizing all the things that come out of a biorefinery. That's really important to us, right? So we make a ton of fuel, a ton of feed, and a ton of carbon dioxide for every time that we process our grain coming in the door. Well, at ADM, we were doing the same type of thing and we had co-products, things like glycerin when we started biodiesel that we had to find new homes for and create new demand. And today, farmers need more demand for their corn than ever before, right? So this is great to unlock this Sustainable Aviation Fuel business. But one of the things that is critical is when you monetize co-products, you have to develop the market at the same time.
So I got to do things like take glycerin from biodiesel and make it into industrial products like propylene glycol. That's the same compound that comes from petroleum. So not only did we do things like that and make propylene glycol, but then you had to go out and sell it in the market. So I got to transition from developing technology, scaling up technology, helping to build plants, being part of the team to running the commercial chemicals business where we actually then had to go sell those products, right? And that is critical because, you know, even big companies, when you start to sell a new product, you're new in the market. And you have to figure out how do I break into that market? How do I monetize that market? What's really the value proposition?
And, you know, part of it is just, you know, what are my economics? And that's really important, right? So you have to really start with what those economics are. How do you build that business? How do you sell the product? So did that. Been there, done that, got to do it even more, took over more big technology programs at ADM and then ended up doing sustainable materials. I was the VP of sustainable materials before I joined Gevo. And, you know, then been with Gevo five years. So as Pat said, I know the company. This has been a long planned transition that we had had. It wasn't a give me, I'll tell you that much. So this was, how do you come into Gevo? How can you help? How can you help shape the business and develop things?
So last year was a big year where I got to take over as the Chief Business Officer after spending time on technology, building things in carbon, right? I was the Chief Carbon Officer before that. And that was instrumental, I think, in a lot of what we had to do to shape Gevo because, again, we make commodity, right? So we have to monetize our commodity. We have to monetize our carbon value that we create. And we have to maximize our incentives. So really building that carbon business and getting that started was critical and developing tools and platforms like Verity, right? Which was a great new business for us. And we're really excited about it. But then being able to put it to use and getting it installed in places like Gevo, North Dakota has been, you know, a critical step.
And then taking over the business, like I said, hitting the ground running after the acquisition last year was just a, you know, transformational year for us. It was great to move into that position and now really getting into the management of the entire company, taking over for Pat starting in April. But like Pat said, he's not going anywhere. He'll be around. He's the Executive Chair of the board right now. It's fantastic, right? So, but I think it's really important during the same time, right? It's not about me so much as it's about that team that Pat talked about, right? So when you think about our team, we've got the best in the business, right?
So whether it's in advocacy and the things that we've got going on on the policy side, people like Lindsay Fitzgerald, we've got sustainability covered, Nancy Young, a veteran in the industry. We've been working with Nancy from very young around heading our sustainability people, heading up, you know, all of our commercial efforts and getting things done. We've got, you know, a new Chief Carbon Officer. You probably saw that recently. We got Alex Clayton, who just is coming on. So it's great. I was the first Chief Carbon Officer, which was really Pat's idea. But we've got a new one. So because it's important to us, we're going to spend the time and we're going to be dedicated to that business and continue to grow it because it's a new business, right?
It's just like the other things that Pat and Chris Ryan, who has been instrumental in developing, you know, the path for which GEVO's been on, we've all developed these new businesses in the past. Carbon's the next one, right? This is the one that we're working on today. We're being, you know, we're making some really good progress. We're going to make more. So it's all good. But, you know, I think this is really the strength of the team, the people that we're putting together. We've got a lot of functional players who can execute on this business. And, you know, you hear a lot from Eric and he's on the call. He does a great job articulating everything that we're talking about and how does it all synthesize and come together to make us money and to benefit our shareholders, right?
So this is really the path that we're going to be on. We're going to continue to grow that. Very excited about where we're going next with the company. But that's a little background on me. So.
Yeah, let's just, but you brought up the next thing I want to talk about is, you know, what do you see? Like, look in the vision, what's going out? What do you see coming? Or tell us, what are you looking at? And why do you think this is a good spot to be?
I know Pat knows the answer. So we're both really excited about this.
I'm talking. No, I pretend I'm just a listener. Tell us what's the opportunity here? Why is this an exciting play? Or what's the exciting opportunity for Gevo?
It goes back to the, I think the dream Pat had, maybe a little early, right? To say like, how can we make energy-dense liquids, hydrocarbons, things like jet fuel, right? Because that's what we're really doing. We're turning renewables into jet fuel. And the important thing there, and this is great because the technology is here, right? So it's all about commercialization today. It's about how do we drive this to a successful business and how do we provide for the energy needs that the United States and really the world is going to require. And aviation fuel is one of those perfect ones where we've got more demand coming. So where is that going to come from? And we think this is a perfect way that we can marry agriculture and energy together to go forward.
So we're, you know, I think Pat, you know, as you say, what am I most excited about? One, there's really two things that are front and center right now. One, continued profitability and driving EBITDA at Gevo, North Dakota, right? Transformational year. And so what are we going to do? We're going to continue to drive that forward. We hit the ground running, you know, selling tax credits, monetizing those, probably first in the industry, developing things like unique insurance products that help us get out there and be front and center, selling the carbon, selling the commodity, putting all that together and driving positive adjusted EBITDA for the company first time ever, right? That's fantastic. And then as we look forward to what's next, right?
The whole point of what we're trying to do is provide the solid base and the foundation at Gevo, North Dakota, so we can execute on what we call Project Northstar, which is really our ATJ30 or alcohol- to- jet 30 million gallon plant that we're working on, you know, really daily with the Department of Energy and others to secure financing for that facility and drive that forward to reality. Because if we're going to deliver jet fuel to the market, we have to have our first plant, first large scale plant. You know, Gevo's been doing this for a long time. We've got a lot of firsts at Gevo, which is one of the things that brought me here, right? So that's just fantastic because it's not that the technology hasn't been there or Gevo hasn't been a leader. We do.
We've got a patent portfolio of over 400 patents. Now it's about taking all that technology and all those firsts and turning it into the first large scale commercial plant, right? And that's what gets exciting for me about the ATJ30 project at North Dakota and getting that thing to the finish line because the growth trajectory from there, it's huge, right? You think about this and Eric's got some slides on this. We don't need to put up the slides right now, but by 2035, the United States is going to need an extra 2.3 billion gallons of jet fuel. Notice I didn't say SAF. I said jet fuel, right? So where's that going to come from? Well, nobody's building any new refineries today. And even if they did, only 9% of that barrel turns into jet fuel, right?
But we have a great technology that we can take ethanol. And as you know, we had more yields for corn this year. Farmers need more homes for the commodities and the U.S. needs more demand for corn that we can grow right here in the United States and provide for our energy needs, right? So this is all about how do we provide as part of our energy solutions for the country. And we can do that, right? We can take ethanol, we can turn it into an energy-dense liquid. We can back to Pat's dream, right? So we're just help try to help Pat realize his dream here. This is really what it's all about. But producing those energy-dense liquids because you can't just stop an aircraft and fill up at the gas station, right? You just can't do that, right?
So you have to have energy-dense liquids that you can fly for long distances. That's why you're not going to electrify a jet anytime soon. You're not going to use hydrogen. They don't have the energy density that you need. But guess what? We can densify ethanol to energy-dense liquids. This is what we're all about, making jet fuel out of ethanol at Gevo, North Dakota. And once we have that first plant, then we're going to be targeting that 2.3 billion gallons of need that the U.S. is going to have by 2035. And so that turns into something like Eric's done the math. It turns into something like we need 70 of these kind of facilities that we're going to be building first of its kind. We anticipate there at Gevo, North Dakota, and at that scale that we would need to satisfy the demand for that market.
So if you ask me what gets me excited, Pat, it's that opportunity. But I think it's a little more than that because it's the entire business system that goes into putting this together. And what do I mean by that? I mean, it all starts at the field, right? So this is back to what part of what I've been doing and with the team I'm really proud of at Gevo is we've always been first and foremost thinking about farmers, putting food first and making sure that we can continue to grow our future, right? And that starts at the field level. And as we have worked with farmers, just a tremendous group of who have been participating in our Verity programs and our USDA programs that we've had in the past, we've seen tremendous improvements on that front, right?
And we can track all of this and prove it. And showing that it's not only that you can reduce something like carbon intensity. Carbon intensities, you know, at the end of the day is just a proxy for a lot of good things that happen. It's a good proxy. If you do more with less, you're more efficient. That's actually what carbon intensity is all about, right? Being more efficient. How do I do more with less? Your carbon intensity also goes down. But we get other benefits. So back to the field, when we're working with farmers, they're doing things. They're not only using less inputs to get more outputs, but they're improving soil health, right? And this is really important long term and how we think about this, that as we're building our business system, we want to track and show how agriculture continues to get better.
And we make these continuous improvements over time because guess what? We're not making any more land. So if we can make that asset or our land healthier, more resilient to extreme weather events and produce more all the time, we get not only more fuel, we get more food, we get more feed, we get more industrial products. So it's really important that we start there and that farmers get rewarded for that. And then we also focus on that same efficiency and, you know, how we manage our inputs and maximize our outputs to do more with less at our production facility. So it's all the way to deliver it from the field to the seat on the aircraft, right? And that's the other piece that I think Pat had this vision a few years back on, you know, we're delivering an energy-dense liquid. Well, guess what?
If you look at a gallon of jet fuel and a gallon of SAF, right? What's different? Well, not much. They look the same. You can't tell the difference. The molecules are the same molecules, whether you make it from corn or if it comes from petroleum. And really, we're working on. You blend those together. So then it's all about the proof. How did I get there? What did I put into that? And that's what our customers need. And this is why we built the Verity business. So we can work with farmers, we can track everything from the field all the way to the seat on the aircraft and prove how we made that and the other benefits, including carbon, of how we manage that carbon in that whole value chain and deliver value then to the final customers.
So, long answer to Pat's question, but it's a combination of things, right? There's not just one thing I'm excited about, but there's many things that we've gotten. We haven't even scratched the surface on some of the other opportunities that GEVO's got because we're still working on great technology platforms like isobutanol, which has been the history of GEVO, which we think is going to be another key technology in the future as we drive forward. It's not, it's alcohols, right? Pat said to start with, it's not just ethanol, it's isobutanol, it's alcohols, it's ethanol, all those together. How can we be whatever the most efficient technology is to get us to the final products to make the highest quality products? That's what we're going to do. So, you know, I think that's really, really critical.
So what we've got today at Gevo, one, great growth platform, things we can execute on today, but we've got a huge portfolio of opportunities that we'll be building graduation plans for in the future that we can get those things to the commercial realities as well. But we couldn't have done it without the great things that Pat has done, Chris Ryan has done. You know, a lot of the people who have worked at Gevo for many, many years have really provided a fantastic foundation now to take forward to this next stage.
Yeah, it's interesting. And this thing, this point about, you know, you need low carbon ethanol, you've got to have, this is the trickier part. That's a subtlety that's hard to see if you're an outsider, but it's the size of the systems we're talking about, the tonnages we're talking about, the volume and scale. This is where Gevo's different than most of the companies out there, in my opinion. And the reason is that we have always thought about the scale in this business system that Paul referred to. You have to be good at selling the co-products. You have to be good about managing the inputs, who comes in from where and how and keep track of it because someone's going to say, "Where'd you get that?
Is that legit or not?" And you see this problem showing up in other companies who are trying to do waste products. Yeah, where did that waste come from exactly? How did it get there? And now you're seeing companies sue for fraud all over the place, not us. And because ours is a straightforward, here's how you get it. We keep track of everything. And you have the ability, you got to have the ability to sell carbon. Paul's built a business to sell carbon of actual real monetization, selling the carbon dioxide. One ton of corn makes one ton of CO2 plus one ton of jet fuel plus one ton of protein, animal feed. So you have to be able to monetize all three to make an economical product. On a fundamental level, yeah, the technologies work.
We have this huge, and we have some that are very advanced technologies. We've been working on ethanol to make it into jet fuel and diesel fuel and gasoline since 2007 or no, before that, yeah, 2007 when I got here. We've been doing it ever since. We worked on isobutanol. And so it isn't the one trick pony like that, but the big commercial opportunity is just what Paul said. 2.3 billion gallon shortfall. How's it, we're going to import more jet fuel really and pay a premium to other countries or should we build it ourselves and have it here and have it cost competitive at the marketplace? Why is it cost competitive? Because monetizing the carbon, monetizing the protein, monetizing any other co-product, and then you get the good net back. So it's a good system. So Paul, what are you looking forward for next year?
And can you give a little color on that in terms of, you know, I know that there's work being done for Gevo, North Dakota, and you know, we've talked in our slide deck, our public deck, there's talk about the growth there of what we're doing. One of the things that people always ask us about, and I'll head off the question, y'all going to raise more money anytime soon? Well, for Gevo, Inc., we've got a strong balance sheet, a lot of cash. We do have to raise money at the project level when we do an alcohol to jet plant. We do. That's why we're having that dialogue with the DOE and others.
But for us, and just growing EBITDA, what we have, we're for a company with a whole bunch of technology and a whole bunch of development and market development capability, we're in a pretty darn strong position, more strong than almost anybody that I'm aware of in our space. And that's because the strength of balance sheet, what's in front of us and our opportunity specifically. So you want to talk about that, Paul? What's going on?
Absolutely. Eric, maybe I'll ask Eric to throw up the slide that we typically use on this because I think, you know, pictures [are worth] a thousand words on this one especially and help everybody understand where we anticipate that the business is going from exactly what Pat said. What do we have today? Where are we looking at in the future? And some of this, you know, this is a couple of things here. Eric, if you can go to there we go. This is the one I like. So, you know, if we think about this is all also in advance of ATJ30 or the Alcohol-to-Jet 30. We'll get to that in a minute.
But this gets pretty exciting pretty fast looking at what's our potential today with the existing business that we have, thinking about how do we optimize what we have, what we can do to grow that business in advance of ATJ30. And then when we get to ATJ30, you know, putting that all together. So, you know, just think about this for a little bit. Last year was really a transformational year. We knew that we wanted to get the Red Trail assets. We completed that acquisition. And then we just think, you know, that the big beautiful bill was great from a standpoint of with the 45Z tax credits that were also there. And we started on that on the early side, right? So when you look at the stack of the potential EBITDA for us, think about the main things that we just talked about.
How do we monetize for Gevo? The value that we create comes from the commodity, the carbon, and maximizing the incentives. Well, for the production tax credits, we hit the ground running. And, you know, anticipate over time, we're trying to get the maximum you can get there is $1 per gallon. We've got a 67 million gallon ethanol plant. So you can kind of get the idea of where we're headed with this. But, you know, CI's carbon intensity is just a proxy for that. So we're trying to get lower and lower scores. Our carbon capture helps us a lot with that, but it also helps us with this carbon value. And the carbon business, while we've got it painted a little bit smaller, you can see in the future, this continues to grow for us. And the carbon business is super important.
We really break it down into two different things. We can attach that carbon value and monetize it with into low carbon fuels. This is where it's great to have a team that can enable as many pathways as possible into different markets because we're selling today into low carbon fuel markets, multiple states and in Canada and different places. We can balance, we call it carbon arbitrage, but we balance that carbon sale, whether it's attached to the fuel or separated out. It's something called a carbon dioxide removal credit. This is a global growing market that's about $10 billion today. We think it's going to continue to grow. Just an example of that, this past year, we signed a deal with a company called Biorecro out of Europe. They're actually purchasing that carbon for us.
It was a $26 million deal over multiple years. So, you know, this is the kind of exciting thing that we're just starting, but we're having some really good progress. So we think that we can build this business, the combination of the incentives, the carbon, and then of course, we've got the commodity. You see all of those things in that stack that take us with, we anticipate we could get to today where we could be is around a $40 million EBITDA business, even without doing additional things, right? This is how do we monetize, how can we keep driving that process forward? But pretty exciting place to be. Then we start thinking about what do we do around de-bottlenecking? Can we expand our production? And I'm not talking about building a new plant.
I'm talking about unlocking more value, creating, you know, several million gallons more at a time coming from the efficiency gains that we need to continue to see. Maybe some equipment, maybe some extra projects. But another one that we see as you're moving more to the, you know, what can we do to unlock that business is also, we didn't just purchase an ethanol plant with carbon capture. We purchased the entire asset, which includes a lot of pore space today. And what is Pore Space? Pore Space is where we actually can sequester, store carbon dioxide long term, right? That's in demand. More people want to store carbon dioxide. What else can we do with carbon dioxide? We can also sell it to other people and they can use it for things like enhanced oil recovery. They can use it for chemical manufacturing.
A lot of it's used in food and beverages. It's how you carbonate your beverage, right? I mean, I've got a carbonated beverage in my hand today. Where did that come from? It probably came from ethanol production for that CO2. But what we're really excited about is because we got this extra pore space, we have the opportunity to bring in potential third-party CO2 to that facility and store that for other people and then help them monetize their carbon. Just like Alex Clayton is out working today as our Chief Carbon Officer to continue to help Gevo monetize carbon, other people can see the value in working with us to help them monetize their carbon. Where are they going to store it? We have unique geology. We're only using 17% of our pore space today.
That means, and we'll use more of it for ourselves as we continue to de-bottleneck the plant. If we make more ethanol, right? Every ton of ethanol that we produce, we produce an extra ton of CO2. We're going to continue to produce more. And we have this opportunity because we can capture it. The equipment's all there. We're ready to go. And we can continue to do that, monetize it, and then either attach it with fuels or separate it for carbon value. And with other people, we can bring that in. So you think about growing our internal carbon business, maybe we can grow that to a $30 million business. Maybe it's more. We're not sure yet, but that's a growing global market that we're really excited about. But then we can monetize this pore space and work with others and bring in extra value.
So that carbon business is really critical for us. Again, in advance of ATJ30, we're going to be working hard to say how much of this potential, you know, $60+ million can we go get and develop and bring back, you know, as real new business opportunities for us. And at the same time, as we increase production and continue to have low CI score, those incentives, you know, that came out in 45Z or clean fuel production tax credits will, as we have more fuel, we can get more clean fuel production tax credits. But it's all based on our ability to produce those gallons, right? That's how you produce it. And we're going to continue to focus on operational excellence. We added Greg Hanselman to the team. He's come on, you know, and he'll be working on operations and engineering.
Great background on doing that, helping us drive these projects, just tremendous background, very similar ag processing, making, you know, products for food, feed, fuels, and industrials just like the rest of us. So he knows how to get things done. We're really excited to have him on the team now. He's hit the ground running. When you put all this together, you still have the commodity. We got to make the commodity. We got to do all this, but really exciting potential here to take a great business and make it even better. That's where we're going in the future. Hopefully that gives you a little bit of idea of what's possible in advance of ATJ30. I would say the other thing that gets us excited is because we're making progress and doing this with our existing assets.
Now we can start to think about, is this a transformation? If we're really going to grow a franchise of ATJ30 plants, this is kind of the base thing that's needed in order to drive this not only for one location, but multiple locations across the country and really around the world. How do you make sure that you can provide the right type of low carbon ethanol, the right type of business system that the ATJ30 plants could be built on as a foundation, right? So we're learning that. And we're developing this business. And this is really important for us that we can show that we execute on this. I think this also helps, like, why would you trust Gevo, right? We've been until this year, we haven't been really running these bigger, larger assets.
I mean, a lot of us individually have been not at Gevo, but at different companies. But now, look, I really believe this is showing that can we do this? Yes. We want to build our right to win. And again, when we think about future business, when we're making things like jet fuel, well, today we're selling commodity, carbon, maximizing incentives. That's exactly the same thing that we're going to do in the future. It's just a different product. It's just a different commodity, but you have to monetize the same way. You have to monetize all your co-products. You have to maximize your carbon value. You want to really maximize your incentives. And we'll continue to do that. And again, this is kind of a proof point for me. Can we do it? The answer has been yes.
Now we need to just keep making it better, drive forward all the great things that we know we can do and unlock more value at our existing site while we get ready for, you know, really the build-out of the ATJ30 plant for serial number one.
Good. That's good. And then now look forward and say, why don't you give a little color on, you know, what ATJ adds?
Yeah. So this gets really exciting, especially because when you think about, and Eric, if you want to move forward.
Maybe I can move forward here.
Yeah, maybe. Well, let's go back to this. We talked about, Pat and I were both talking about this. This is what's exciting for us because there's a real need, right? We always have to think about how are we going to develop growth for Gevo? Well, what's the need? Well, the need is we need more jet fuel. Again, I didn't say SAF. We just need more jet fuel. And again, when we think about this, the U.S. is going to need 2.3 billion gallons per year. This is not our data. This is EIA, right? So this is coming from the U.S. Energy Information Administration about what the U.S. is going to need.
And as we do that, nobody's building a new refinery today. Maybe they do, but again, only 9% of that barrel turns into jet fuel where we can target jet fuel specifically as our primary product coming out of the ATJ plant. We could also make diesel, right? I mean, we can turn the knob and make diesel fuel as well if that's really what's needed. But again, think about us filling the gaps. How do we supplement what's out there from petroleum? Petroleum's not going away, right? And we're not a replacement strategy. We're really supplementing that, blending up to 50%. That's what you do with synthetic aviation fuel and jet fuel to blend together to deliver these solutions to the market. But the demand is there, right? We believe.
The other piece that's really important as we go for this next stage, just like we were talking about being competitive on our current businesses today, we believe that the ATJ30 and the technology that we're deploying is the lowest cash cost technology that's out there, which is, again, really important. You look at this chart. What we're really seeing is that if you look at jet fuel prices and price of crude oil, can we be competitive with where that's been? We believe that the cash cost is really a solid, strong competitor, especially compared to other options. Like things like power- to-l iquids, you know, interesting technology, we think that those need to be invested in more, but they're not ready to be competitive today. Things like HEFA, that's oil-based oilseed technology. So using fatty acids and those products, still good.
You know, we're believers in that. We need a lot of solutions. But what we're getting excited about is that we believe that the ATJ30 technology and alcohol to jet that we're working on is already kind of the lowest in this cost stack of these options, which is great because that marries with this increasing supply of corn in the United States where we can produce more and more, right? We need a growth strategy. Well, growth strategy, you need to grow. We've got corn. You grow the corn. We've got a growth strategy then to turn that into more fuel. And what gets really exciting then for us, back to Pat's question around, hey, what's the future look like here? Fantastic, right? So just to give you, you saw where we were kind of leaving off in advance of ATJ30.
We anticipate that after building the Alcohol-to-Jet 30 plant, we can get to something like $150 million in Adjusted EBITDA from that plant. Okay. So how do we get there, right? This is really important. What's the size of this investment? Roughly, you know, we've mentioned this a few times now on calls and our last earnings call, roughly a $500 million total installed capital to get something like this done. Pretty exciting when you think that the Adjusted EBITDA from that opportunity could be upwards of $150 million a year. Now, it's also important to note that we're not including a lot of incentives here. This is where the carbon, selling the carbon, and now in this case, those carbon manifests itself in sales called Scope 1s and Scope 3s. I know we need a vocabulary list.
We need a dictionary for Gevo, like when you're listening to us talk because there's so much of this. But think about how airlines and the customers of airlines are trying to make sure that they're part of the solution. We're actually selling our commodity and our carbon either together sometimes or we're separating that out and selling it. We've got real deals that we've produced that we've made in the market today. And so we're already showing that this business model is functional, right? Now we need to build a plant. Now we need to deliver this kind of value that we anticipate can be done.
It's not dependent on things like 45Z tax credits because by the time we get this built, maybe there's a little bit of time left, but we really build this based on the commodity value, things like RINs, and then the carbon value that exists. We're very excited about this. How do we do this and then be very efficient? It's about how we manage carbon. How do we have the operational excellence that's already starting today in Gevo, North Dakota, and really get serial number 1 built so we can prove this because we've got to have serial number 1 that delivers the economics and the proof that then we can start to franchise this basically and think about plant number 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, right? Maybe 70, maybe more. We're not sure. This is what gets us very excited.
It's what gets me excited and driving forward to make sure that this is a model that then we can kind of copy, edit, paste over and over again, right? And that, I think, comes down to fundamentally the concepts that all of us have been delivering about how to build these plants in a modular style, how can we build them and then be able to drop them in next to low carbon ethanol plants, not just in the United States, but globally because it's a global business, right? Aviation fuel is aviation fuel demand. While we talk about the U.S., it's something that every place is developing. So we do have projects that we're starting to develop internationally and excited about those, but we're going to keep our eye on the prize here to get this first one done.
Yeah. And I think it's very interesting. And one of the things that when people wonder, well, what's Gevo been doing? Oh my goodness, you know, I don't get it. I just can't just put a plant into existence, a jet plant. Well, no, the jet plant needs a, here's a prerequisite. You got to have low carbon ethanol. And here's the thing. You got to have a business system that actually works. Well, guess what we just proved over the last, what, 18 months? Yes, you can make low carbon ethanol. Remember, before we came along, people didn't do that. No one had done it. Now we did it. And guess what? We, under Paul's leadership, created a marketplace and how to monetize the carbon value. No one had done that. And it is the same business system that's required for jet fuel.
So, you know, what we just did, we took a whole lot of risk off the table as you're looking at this. And now all we have to do, I shouldn't say that minimalization, but all we have to do is make it, get the ATJ plant financed. There's still people who will look at that and go, well, no one's done this giant scale plant before. And, you know, of course, we want a large plant, not one of these pilot plant demonstration projects. We've had one of those already for years and years and years. We need to get on with the large scale plant. And is the market going to be there? Well, that's what the team is proving out. And the prize looks good. And the fundamental demand is good. We're in the right spot. Remember, this plays the overall strategy in the U.S.
More energy, cost-effective, delivered, fills the gap, fills the need. This one creates jobs, creates new demand for corn. It's good for the rural economy and all the rest. Oh yeah, it happens to monetize carbon value, but that's its jet fuel underneath that creates the flywheel, the demand flywheel. And yeah, for those people who want to abate carbon and get, you know, and do something about carbon, cool. We got some really good products. And our approach is to cut through the BS that's out there. You got so many people out there with their hype and BS. It's mind-numbing as to what we hear. You know what? Discipline approach. The carbon's going down the hole. We're certifying where we can certify where the carbon came from throughout. So it's not this goofy BS. It's real. You know what?
The world hasn't seen that before, not this with this clarity. That's a new market attribute. Paul's team has done a great job. So with that, unless Paul, you want anything else, we could open it up for questions?
Yeah, questions would be great.
Thank you both for that discussion. We'll now move on to the Q&A. Your first question is, how are the bottlenecking efforts in Richardton going? Can you share progress, challenges, successes, and expected results?
So we're just getting started on this, right? So we're really still a little bit in our planning phase. But look, the team's already doing this, right? And the thing that I think we've learned about the Richardton team, right, as it started under Red Trail and now is Gevo, North Dakota, they're fantastic, right? The people there are great. They are always doing more with less. So we continue to see the team and its plant be innovative, even without additional capital being innovative and doing this. Now we're in the phase of getting, you know, what are really the top list of projects? How do those projects pay back? So what are those returns? How fast can we get them done?
Because we can't go fast enough for some of these projects that, as you're looking at them, then we got to get them approved, then we got to get them executed. We're in that process today of what that debottlenecking is going to deliver. So more to come on this, but it's very exciting. We've talked about debottlenecking to something like 75 million gallons in the past. So that's really the path that we're on today. And now it's about like turning that plan into action and then delivering the results that start to move us in that way. And again, we're not just making more fuel. We're making more feed and we're making more carbon dioxide. And as we think about that, we have to capture value from all of them.
So the pie just gets bigger from all the different things that we're producing, but we have to keep our eye on the prize, right? Which is how do we monetize all three of those things through combinations of the commodity, the carbon, and maximizing our incentives.
Thank you, Paul, for your comments on that. Your next question is, what financing does Gevo currently have in place and what is the current status of the DOE loan? What requirements or milestones are still outstanding before the loan can be finalized? Additionally, from an investor perspective, can we realistically expect in 2026 outside of the DOE loan in terms of operations, revenues, or strategic developments?
I think, Paul, you should take that on.
The first part of the question is, so this is going to be a long, it's a multi-part questionnaire, so I'll help you remember it, right? And so the first part is about financing requirements looking forward. What are you seeing? What are we talking about? What are you thinking? And then we'll come back and Noella, you'll have to remind about that latter part of the question because heck, I've already forgotten it.
That's good. So Pat, it was already, we were talking about a little bit earlier too, right? That, you know, our financing requirements, like we've got a good balance sheet today. So debottlenecking projects, things like that that we're doing, you know, we're going to be moving ahead with those as soon as we get all of the plans lined up. The big ones, ATJ30, obviously we're working closely with the Energy Department's Finance Group from DOE and really excited that the loan, conditional loan guarantee got extended, you know, this past year. So we're working daily on this, trying to get that to, you know, to completion. The financing that's required, we talked about it in total installed capital for an ATJ30 plant, we think is a little over $500 million.
So, but by the time you have in total installed finance costs for the finance project, it'll be more than that, right? So that's why that total conditional loan guarantee was a lot higher. We're doing all kinds of stuff that we're really excited about and how we put that together. So that's going to be really the focus for where we drive forward. But, you know, it's a combination of everything that we have to do to get that secured. Team's working hard on that. And Pat mentioned too, that's really a project, right? So we think about that as how do we set that up as this ATJ vehicle and a project that we'll be working on the financing for that entire project there. What was the other part?
Let me add to this.
Maybe one of the issues.
Yeah, one of the issue things about the DOE loan guarantee is that the more attractive it gets on a commercial basis, the less likely they are to help. It's a crazy thing, right? Because they're going, "Well, heck, you can get that done with a commercial bank." Well, and we were talking about how our incentives are attractive. So right now we're in this, they want to see this happen. They want to see bigger projects. I can tell you that that's what the interest is. How do you do stuff bigger? Cool. We'll have to think about that too. And so we got work to do with the DOE and it's good. They're interested. And you know what? But the project is strong irrespective of what happens with those guys. And so it's looking good. And yeah, we got to finance it.
It'll be a mix of debt and equity. The team is all over it. We got a guy, our CFO, Leke Agiri, who is really good at this. He's just all over it. The second part, I'm going to try to remember, Paul, it was something about, I forgot, never mind. What was it?
Yeah. So the second part was additionally from an investor perspective, what can we realistically expect in 2026 outside of the DOE loan in terms of operations, revenues, or strategic developments?
I think we talked about it. Debottlenecking the plant, continuing to drive positive adjusted EBITDA, continuing to create some more tax credits. Again, Leke Agiri, our CFO, just did a fantastic job getting out in front of, you know, monetizing tax credits was last year and then really developing our carbon business, right? So you think about what we can do on the chart. We're going to be pushing as much as we can on that chart to drive our adjusted EBITDA towards the targets that we've, you know, kind of painted here as our aspirational goals. But, you know, it's, we're going to be making it real. That's really what we're about.
And there's another thing that I'd be reluctant to talk about, but I'll mention it. It is that a lot of, and we hear from shareholders all the time, we all do, but gosh, that Red Trail thing is really cool, that you've got acquisition. Are there other ones like that that you could also do and come and add value to? The answer is, yeah, probably. We can't talk about stuff like that. What we may or may not do and when we may or may not do it, we can't talk about that because those are the strategic things that that question might be referencing. Yeah, it's not lost on us. Remember what Paul said, he's got it 100% right.
Prerequisite to making any kind of a hydrocarbon fuel, you got to have a well-operating low carbon ethanol plant that can capture carbon, a low carbon ethanol plant that can capture carbon in a good location. Yeah, that's not lost on that team, Paul's team. It's not lost on those guys.
Well, thank you both for shedding some light on that. Your next question is, given Gevo's current production ramp-up and commercialization milestones, what specific strategic actions do you believe will most meaningfully drive GEVO's share price appreciation in the near term, next 6-12 months? And what measurable milestones should investors watch for as indicators of that progress?
That's a tough one. You got to predict the stock price now, man. Good luck, guys. I'm out.
Well, it's out here. How about Eric take his shot because he's doing this all day long, right? I mean, Eric's on all these relations, guys. So he's got this answer, I know.
Yeah. I mean, hopefully you can hear me okay. The video spiked a couple of times. Just let me know if you can. But, you know, Gevo was a $20 million per year revenue company. If you look at the last couple of quarters, we should be in the $150 million-$200 million of revenue per year. So look for that. We went to positive EBITDA and we said we were going to get to $20 million on annualized rate. Last quarter, we had $6.7 million of adjusted non-GAAP EBITDA. So you should see that increase each quarter. There may be some noise in that, but over the next several quarters, you should see us starting to get to that $40 million per EBITDA that Paul mentioned earlier that we can get to without capital.
Then the question is, how much can we go beyond that to that $110 million number that Paul mentioned? The last thing I'll mention that shouldn't be lost on anyone is Leke Agiri, our CFO, said in our last quarterly earnings call, our operating cash flow should be getting to effectively neutral to positive in the next couple of quarters. We'll see how quickly that happens. That's just a question of the timing of when the sales of our tax credits catches up to our receipt of cash. When those things catch up to each other, we'll have really transformed financially because that's now a sustainable operating cash flow positive business that can fund its own small growth and then get capital from other sources like the DOE to do the big growth like the ATJ30.
These are things that you should look out for in the next couple of quarters to a few quarters.
I think even, I mean, and all that's great, right? So that's really what is driving here. But if you think about our future, this is a model that while we're demonstrating it today at Gevo, North Dakota, we believe we can replicate over and over again. So the combination of Pat's, you know, veiled answer there earlier about growth and, you know, Eric's, you know, spot-on piece of what we're really trying to do for transformational of after buying Red Trail assets, that combination, right? I think I feel really good about the path we're on to develop this as a business that we can continue to grow well beyond the one site that we have today.
Yeah. And I'll put some, you know, here's something that I really want people to understand. We're out of the world of having to do diluted fundraising to survive. That's not our world, guys. That's not our world. That's not where we are. Unlike most all the other companies in our space, that ain't us. We have a strong balance sheet. This is about growth projects, creative stuff. We have a business that can operate and make a ton of money just by growth and expanding it between the ethanol plant and the site itself without doing the ATJ and learning how to sell more and more of the carbon, increasing the value of the carbon. Ton of opportunity. Great. And we happen to be the best technology portfolio with the best technology to make jet fuel. Awesome.
So Paul, that's a, you know, as he's talked about, it has a huge growth opportunity. How do we do that best? And so it's a creative stuff that we're interested in. And so yeah, will we need to raise more money as Gevo, Inc. over time? The board fully understands that we will have to do that. But it's for projects and growth and a creative stuff. It's not to survive. That's a completely different world. So a lot of people who've been long-time investors in Gevo, they go, "Oh my God, you guys are going to have to raise money again." No, pay attention to the balance sheet. I just got an email from somebody here the other day and it's like, "Gosh, the person must not even be paying attention to anything we talk about." Our cash flows have changed. It's changed.
We're on the positive, we're headed positive, people. That's a completely different world. It's a different business. Now, by the way, this is all reason then it says why this is a good time for me to retire. We're in a good position and there's a great team. Hey, and I'm here to help, Paul.
Yeah. And you know, Pat makes a really good point, but the future looks potentially even better because we've got new technology. Probably everybody saw that we were awarded another patent in our ETO portfolio, our ethanol-to-olefins. So all the economics that we were just talking about projecting for ethanol to jet to make more jet fuel, we believe this even gets better. So we are investing, continuing investing in technology that we believe drives down our cost, drives down our capital. So the ETO patent, which again, you know, these are real assets. These patents are real assets for the company that give us this protection long-term to operate this business. But we believe that that technology can decrease our capital by up to 35%. So that's huge, right? And our operating costs by up to another 35%.
That makes everything that we just talked about even better. So we're very excited about the future. And if we can continue to do that, we've got great partners like Axens and LG Chem working on those things with us. We're not doing it in a vacuum. We've got, you know, pathways to deploy that technology, but we got to get it out of the pilot and development stage to commercialization. Again, we've all had a history of doing these kinds of things. We're very optimistic about what that can look like and great to see that we have this future that we can potentially grow. But we need to grow while we're winning, right? I mean, that I think that's really the important thing that we're showing we can do is how do we operate a quality business today?
How do we deploy this technology going in the future that can be even better and more cost competitive to deliver the energy solutions and really at the same time delivering food and, you know, feed to the marketplace because the world needs it, right? And we can do it. We can do it better and we can do it while we're managing our carbon and we anticipate very profitable for Gevo and our shareholders.
Thank you all for sharing your perspective on that. We'll take a couple more questions here. The next one is, do you plan on extending the business to a naval market this year, 2026?
Sure. I understood the question. Say it again. Say it again, Noella.
Yeah, I'll repeat it. Do you plan on extending the business to a naval market this year?
Was it naval?
Yes.
Market? Oh, naval.
People mean like marine fuels.
Marine fuels. Marine fuels. Yeah. Let's talk about, Paul, tell us about marine fuels.
Now you're thinking about it. I think the marine fuel industry is interesting, right? You've gone through some cycles of can we make renewable methanol? Can we make all kinds of different things? I think the industry is now waking up to the, hey, look, ethanol is a great fuel, not only for on-road applications, but potentially for marine applications. And the same business system that we're talking about to provide low carbon ethanol, why not, right? I mean, so this is a new area that we're really digging into now. We've got some, you know, pretty interesting and exciting feedback from that market. So yes, we'll be looking at all the options of where can ethanol make us the most money, right?
And especially as we monetize the commodity, the carbon, and maximize our incentives, we'll just always be balancing that out to say like, is it in a low carbon fuel market that's on road or on the water? So good. We also have a really interesting, it's interesting because our isobutanol portfolio, we've got a lot of interest there even in performance marine applications. So for, you know, outboard engines, you know, that type of stuff. So we think that there's a lot when you think about alcohols, marine's a good market. We think it's going to grow.
There's one that's emerging that has been published. So if people are paying attention to what's published around the world, you'll see that isobutanol is being qualified to work in diesel fuel as well. So that's interesting as a blend stock, kind of like ethanol is in gasoline, you can do that with isobutanol in diesel fuel. And that offers an interesting one that was not on our radar screen years ago, but is now emerging as a real opportunity. And so that'll be interesting to see how that unfolds. Still got to go through qualification periods and things, but there's publications around that, particularly in India.
Well, thank you both for that response. Then we'll take one last question. The last question is, what locations do you see as the best opportunity zones for future plants and what supporting factors do you need in that area to support your development?
Yeah. So look, that's a great question. We've got a whole site selection team that's been helping us for, you know, focused on this from a Gevo perspective. It's how we identified, you know, with our partners, Red Trail as an acquisition. But look, you got to have great corn, great farmers. We like having carbon capture and sequestration on site. That's great. We want good logistics, access to low-cost energy and potentially decarbonized energy. So all of those things together wrap up into kind of the things that we need when we're looking at additional locations. The U.S. is great, right? You know, we think that the potential, I was just talking with some folks from NCGA, National Corn Growers Association the other day, the outlook on corn in the United States to continue to have year-on-year yield improvements on existing acres is tremendous, right?
The new technology that's being deployed, what farmers are able to deliver, this creates an abundant feedstock. We like that growth potential. So U.S. definitely is good. We've also started to see, you know, some opening up, you know, for policies around crop-based fuels in places like the U.K. So we get excited about this because for a long time, we've said no crop-based fuels for not really what we believe is a good reason. But now we're seeing them open the door and say, "Look, we should take a look at the crop-based fuels back for exactly the same reason Pat said." If you just think about waste, waste, I don't believe waste is a growth strategy. You want to minimize waste. I mean, so as we think about what can we do, you minimize waste, you can use it, that's fine.
But if you really need to service a growing market, like the dynamics that we talked about in jet fuel, you need something that you can grow, you can do it in a very sustainable fashion while improving soil health and delivering more food and using land wisely. I mean, all those things are good, but we see that going well. But, you know, U.K. looks kind of interesting with their potential relaxation and stuff. You know, Australia has some really interesting things going on. You know, so this is a global market. We're going to continue to look at those opportunities while we stay focused with our eyes on the prize here in North Dakota to get that done into the finish line.
Yeah. It's a pretty interesting world out there. And this, I think our team has done an outstanding job. This is a, Paul's got a great team. And it's like getting this thing he just mentioned of changing the opinion about what's possible on agriculture and why you can do good agriculture, agriculture done right, where you're actually building up the quality of the land, improving the yields, reducing the inputs. People are teaching people about that, how that works. I mean, how many people do you suppose have come up and done tours of farms because they've never been to a farm before?
300 or so.
It's a big number. Just guess.
Yeah. You got to teach people because they've been told by environmental groups farming's bad. Well, guess what? Farming, that's an overall blanket statement. We all know overall blanket statements aren't true. So which is true, what's true, how do you show it and what's done? And this point that Paul's been talking about of, no, we can document which farmers, which corn, what makes sense, which growing practices, it all ties together. And you can create these attributes. Remember, our view is that if we can create a good attribute of carbon that goes back to the field, that's something you can monetize in the marketplace and create revenue from it and EBITDA from it. So it's a valuable thing to do. But people, the mentality is, you know, when people who come up these farms, they go, "Well, we didn't know that was possible." You can do that.
You can, there's farming done right. Wow, I had no idea. But that's part of why this is new and what's been so done and why this is so transformational for us to have this big operating system from Gevo North Dakota, because now it's that much bigger and now people can see farm, they can see the production, they can see the carbon capture, it's going down a hole. There's no denying it. And now that no one's done that before. No one has done that before. And so we get, you know, when I'm complaining, I think we're underestimated. You know, people don't, they just think, "Well, this should be easy," because the way people talk about it kind of casually and glibly in the marketplace, hell no, these are big systems that have to be done.
And we did it first to show people it can be done. That's what we just did this last year. That's amazing. Finally, we're getting there and showing what we had envisioned can be made real.
Excellent. Well, thank you all for your comments today. And thank you to everyone who submitted questions. If you did not get a chance to submit your question, you can reach out to the appropriate account manager here at Renmark. That concludes our presentation for today. But before we go, I will turn back the floor to the Gevo team for final remarks.
Well, I'm going to hand it over to Paul. Paul's the guy in charge. You know, he's got the leadership and he's the guy I want. And leading. And I'll be a supporting player for him and whatever I can do to help this team, his team be successful. And I'm still one of the larger investors. And so I really kind of care a lot about this. And so I'm going to be helping wherever I possibly can. But I'm going to turn it over to Paul because it's your show, Paul.
Thanks, Pat. And look, I no doubt Pat will keep the pressure on, like he said. So that doesn't go away. But look, we had a transformational year last year. This one I anticipate to be even better, right? As we drive everything that we talked about on this call, very excited. We've got a great team putting all that together, monetizing our commodity, our carbon, maximizing incentives, continue to grow. You'll hear more about the debottling thing that we've got to go on. And really, it's about building this carbon business that we believe is kind of our superpower going forward and, you know, unlocking that extra value for us in the marketplace. And then not just doing it one time, but doing it multiple times over and over and over again as we copy, edit, paste, right? You'll hear us talk more.
We've already talked about a lot, but this copy, edit, paste. How do you grow this business, right? We're building a franchise. We need it because we've got demands. Jet fuel, we need more jet fuel. So how do we do that? Well, we got to franchise these plants, but we got to get serial number one done first. And we're well on our way to getting that done and, you know, making good on that whole deliverable. So I think it's a really exciting year. Expect, you know, more results because we've delivered results and I'm sure everybody's got high expectations for us. And we're going to continue to meet those expectations as we go forward. We got the team, we've got the capabilities, and hopefully what everybody's getting the idea is that we've got the right to win.
That's really the important thing to me is proving that we've got the right to win and that we can grow this business and continue to grow it well beyond where we're at today. Thank you very much.
And thank you all of you for your presentation today. Once again, this was Gevo, Inc. trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol GEVO. Thank you to everyone in Atlanta 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 this presentation under the VNDR Library tab. Please stay tuned for other presentations in your area and see you next time.