DRAGON 1

Project Dragon (DRAGON I) was LanzaTech's planned two-facility Sustainable Aviation Fuel development at Port Talbot, Wales, originally designed to capture waste gases from Tata Steel's blast furnaces via LanzaTech's proprietary gas fermentation technology to produce ethanol, which would then be converted to SAF via LanzaJet's Alcohol-to-Jet process (planning application P2023/0858 submitted November 2023, £25 million UK Department for Transport Advanced Fuels Fund grant secured, over 150 jobs targeted). Following the closure of the Tata blast furnaces, which removed the original waste-gas ethanol pathway, LanzaTech evaluated alternative configurations including imported ethanol supplied directly to the Port Talbot SAF plant, and a separate ethanol production facility at Milford Haven that would have used captured CO₂ combined with green hydrogen to produce ethanol for upgrading into e-SAF. On June 12, 2026, LanzaTech UK Managing Director Jim Woodger announced the company has ceased development of both DRAGON I in Port Talbot and the associated Milford Haven ethanol facility, concluding that Port Talbot's site-specific capital costs are not competitive versus alternative locations with existing infrastructure and that the high cost of green hydrogen in the UK makes the CO₂-plus-hydrogen ethanol pathway economically unviable. LanzaTech has also currently ceased developing all UK ethanol production facilities that would use CO₂ combined with green hydrogen, absent supportive policy developments. Learnings from DRAGON I have been transferred to DRAGON II, LanzaTech's follow-on SAF facility being advanced at pace in Humberside, England, with Financial Investment Decision targeted for 2027.