Notes from Peanut Butter Lake: Why SAF Is Moving Slower than It Should — and What Cascadia Teaches Us about Real Take-Off

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January 06, 2026

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by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) ... Today, aviation accounts for 3% of global carbon emissions, and since hydrogen and electric aircraft remain decades from wide-scale deployment, SAF is the only drop-in solution available to decarbonize flight over the next 40 to 70 years.

Systemic Friction on “Peanut Butter Lake”

If the bioeconomy has a region that has earned the right to be impatient, it is Cascadia. Across Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia, the pieces required to scale SAF are already being connected. Yet, the “peanut butter” remains in the form of systemic challenges. The current jet fuel market favors high-volume, lowest-cost, index-based pricing from proven suppliers, giving legacy oil refiners generations of market advantage.

New producers face daunting hurdles: SAF refining is capital-intensive, with new projects often exceeding $1 billion. Furthermore, the SAF certification process requires higher standards than fossil fuels, and current blend limits of 50% require a fossil component, limiting offtake potential at strategic airports. Airlines, operating on low margins, are often unable to absorb “green premiums,” and the market suffers from a lack of durable federal policy and limited access to pipelines for new producers. Right now, each bioeconomy project is still being evaluated as a bespoke experiment, which is deadly for scale.

The Cascadia Architecture: Systems-Level Solutions

The Cascadia Sustainable Aviation Accelerator (CSAA) and its partner, the Cascadia Sustainable Aviation Institute (CSAI), were created specifically to thin this “peanut butter” by de-risking the entire SAF value chain simultaneously. By coordinating the unglamorous work of standardization and trust-building, these organizations ensure private capital can move with confidence across infrastructure, offtake, and execution risks.

Through a shared services model, the coalition provides targeted support to help producers overcome market barriers:

• Offtake Optimization: Structures multi-modal partnerships for renewable diesel, naphtha, and SAF to improve project economics across the heavy-duty transportation sector.

• Policy Advocacy: Harmonizes Clean Fuel Standards across the West Coast to create a stable and predictable credit market.

• Supply Chain Development: Coordinates the construction of blending terminals and expands distribution infrastructure to move fuel from production sites to wingtips cost-effectively.

• Shared R&D Infrastructure: Provides leased modular production facilities and “digital twins”—computer models of biorefineries used to adjust fuel formulas—to lower R&D costs for new producers.

Importantly, this kind of clearing is no longer hypothetical. A recent first-of-its-kind integration between the SAFc Registry, Chooose, and Alaska Airlines demonstrates how interoperable, transparent systems can standardize SAF transactions across buyers and sellers.

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This shift also addresses environmental and economic justice. Communities adjacent to airports currently face a significantly higher risk of asthma hospitalization due to jet fuel combustion. SAF improves air quality by cutting particulate matter, soot, and NOx by 20% to 70%. Furthermore, a regional SAF ecosystem provides high-quality jobs for Tribal Nations and rural communities involved in feedstock cultivation and refining, turning the bioeconomy into a engine for regional prosperity.

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Markets scale when risk has somewhere to go. The missing layer isn’t another accelerator, grant program, or white paper. It’s the layer that turns “this should work” into “this is bankable.” The place where:

contracts mean the same thing across projects
disputes don’t become existential
insurers know how to price uncertainty
lenders don’t have to reinvent diligence every time

Right now, each bioeconomy project is still being evaluated as a bespoke experiment. That’s fine for innovation. It’s deadly for scale. Every system moves at the speed of its slowest uncertainty.

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In Part Two, we’ll look at how regions have solved this problem before — not by extracting more, but by inventing places where risk could safely land. From the emergence of maritime insurance in 17th-century London to the standardization of electricity markets in the early 20th century, every industrial leap followed the same pattern. Cascadia may be closer to that moment than it realizes. READ MORE

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