Sustainable Peaks and Valleys (for SAF)

August 24, 2026

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by Caitlin Scheresky (SAF Magazine) ... A few strong contenders explain the quieter conversation, with political, financial and legal risk topping the list. In the United States, much has to do with the current administration's lack of focus. Nevertheless, there are still major initiatives being carried out on regional and state bases, which may be one key to moving the SAF industry forward until it's able to rebolster federal support.

Quieter on Commitments
In an industry as new and as vast as the SAF industry, no singular reason, person or airline can be fairly blamed for causing the industry slowdown, though many individual factors hold their salt. One major contributor to the lag surrounding SAF implementation in the U.S. has been the shift in priorities in line with the transfer of executive power. In the Trump administration’s inaugural Executive Order 14154, Unleashing American Energy, President Trump stated that the U.S. energy dominance was impeded by “burdensome and ideologically motivated regulations,” in reference to the Biden administration’s climate-focused policies, shifting the executive focus instead to “unleash America’s affordable and reliable energy and natural resources.”

Part of the SAF support slowdown under the Trump administration might be more accurately attributed to the president’s plan to improve the United States’ air traffic control system, says Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative Executive Director Steve Csonka.

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Across the pond, the advertisement methods surrounding SAF faced criticism from European regulators last year. European airlines face legal language restrictions, should their statements be misconstrued by customers. But, Csonka points out, semantics have been a key factor in the decarbonizing game for as long as the game has been played. “It’s something that the industry is having to respond to. But with respect to the requirements in the EU and what happens with the EU [Emissions Trading System], it’s sort of a trivial issue, like a speed bump.” Too many speed bumps in a row, however, lead to a move-with-caution approach.

And, of course, the issue of cost is a familiar beast in the renewable fuel sphere. SAF faces a premium of anywhere between two and five times more than fossil-based jet fuel, as written by The International Council on Clean Transportation’s Jane O’Malley last fall. The cost, O’Malley noted, is boosted primarily due to feedstock costs, their availability and the risk involved in investing in a project with a delayed product result.

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he U.K. government’s Low Carbon Fuels Fund, a £219 million ($293 million) program, is dedicated to developing the SAF market as it sits under its current mandate of a 2% SAF content in all U.K. jet fuel, followed by its anticipated 10% and 22% goals in 2030 and 2040, respectively. The European Union’s ReFuelEU Aviation Regulation similarly requires a 2% SAF blend, with a 70% SAF content by 2050.

The challenge presented by these mandates isn’t the demand for SAF, but the inconsistencies related to SAF production. The EU bans crop-based SAF use in their decarbonization efforts; the U.K., which previously shared the ban, indicated potential reconsideration regarding its strict criteria earlier this year. Meanwhile, airlines in Asia and the U.S. are without the same strict guidelines; for the U.S., this also means being largely without government support, financially or otherwise.

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For instance, the Minnesota SAF Hub—a first-of-its-kind coalition led by the GREATER MSP Partnership—is bringing together airlines, fuel producers, agriculture, researchers, utilities and government to build an integrated SAF value chain. Its work spans near-term deployment of SAF at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, development of in-state production capacity, expansion of feedstock supply chains and investment in future pathways such as carbon capture, woody biomass and power-to-liquid fuels. By coordinating infrastructure, research, financing and commercial partnerships across the region, the Hub demonstrates that meaningful progress on SAF continues at the local level, even as the broader industry navigates near-term headwinds (read more on page 12).

The Port of Seattle, notable for its role as the first U.S. airport operator to set a timeline and goals for the transition to SAF, hopes to hit its first milestone in 2028 of a 10% minimum SAF blend powering every SEA-fueled flight. In May 2023, Washington State welcomed a new law creating a per-gallon tax credit and policy incentive of up to $2 per gallon, backed by the SEA Airport; by 2050, SEA Airport aims to produce its maximum jet fuel blend locally from sustainable sources.

Renewable energy progress at the Port of Seattle isn’t limited to SAF; in 2021, the Ports of Seattle, Tacoma, Northwest Seaport Alliance (Washington State) and British Columbia, Canada’s Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, renewed the Northwest Ports Clean Air Strategy, which has a 2050 goal to “phase out emissions from seaport related activities by 2050,” bringing sustainable maritime fuel to the forefront of the conversation.

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California-based WasteFuel is threading an important needle for both maritime and aviation by converting waste into SAF, green bio-methanol, and renewable natural gas. In 2021, Danish shipping and logistics company A.P. Moller-Maersk invested in WasteFuel, enabling the California company to develop biorefineries targeted toward utilizing “unrecoverable waste that would otherwise degrade, and release methane and other harmful emissions into the atmosphere.”

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Bright Future, Rough Patch
One point most seem to agree on is the importance of government and industry communication and collaboration, the best example of which is none other than a government mandate. Both the EU and U.K. have enacted mandates requiring increasing blends of SAF into their aviation fuel supply, regardless of the cost to airlines. Whether mandates will be enough on their own is another story.

Willie Walsh, director general of the International Air Transport Association, has not shied away from voicing his doubts about the plausibility of the widespread 2050 net zero goal. In a June IATA press release, Walsh shared that global SAF production would only make up 0.8% of all airline fuel. “The path to meeting 65% of our needs in 2050 is growing more difficult with each year of ineffectively sequenced government policies and oil companies’ manifest lack of interest,” he said.

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The IATA has called for a four-pronged action plan, including expansion of renewable energy supply, open access to fuel infrastructure, strengthened policy support, and the implementation of a global SAF market with “harmonized standards that create enduring rules and fair competition.” READ MORE

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Advancing Despite Headwinds (Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuel Initiative/SAF Magazine)

Excerpt from Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuel Initiative/SAF Magazine: Today, we find ourselves living in interesting times in the world of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). The current lack of a cohesive U.S. administration-wide SAF strategy makes industry development a bit difficult in the U.S., but efforts continue. Meanwhile, policy appears to be driving commercialization in other regions of the world. Irrespective of location, some SAF developers continue to advance toward commercialization, as well as many other associated supply chain entities. However, total production and usage remains trivial, with production cost (and related market pricing) being too high for broader voluntary adoption in the absence of policy incentives or mandates.

Against that background, key SAF constituents continue their focus on a vision for achieving industry commitments. Within the CAAFI community, we're centered on the nuts and bolts of SAF development, with a lot of effort on research and development, fuel qualification, unique feedstock development, supply chain definitions, and trying to pull agencies into an integrated, collaborative approach. It takes fortitude, but continued progress encourages continued effort.

In the fuel qualification arena, we now have eight standalone pathways that have been approved in ASTM D7566; 12 more are in process. Quite a few others have recently expressed interest in qualifying new pathways and are working through prescreening and Clearinghouse processes in the U.S., United Kingdom and European Union. The application of new cost-reducing technologies is ongoing, as evidenced by recent contact from a producer able to generate C12 multi-branched alkanes—the heart of the jet fuel range of molecules—directly from lignocellulose. The jet fuel spec (ASTM D1655) also now allows three coprocessing pathways, with several more under consideration.

So, against this backdrop, CAAFI remains focused on executing a vision for the future of success of SAF, by pursuing approaches that continue to bring down production cost. These include:

• Introduction of fully formulated fuels—those requiring no blending (having a reasonable distribution of paraffins [iso-, normal- and cyclo-] and select aromatics), enabling the blending of SAF blending components (to achieve the necessary distribution of hydrocarbon components). Such an approach potentially eliminates the need for blending with petroleum-based jet fuel, allowing SAF to be delivered at the lowest cost and with the lowest carbon intensity to a convenient airport.

• Progressing on coprocessing—advancing a generic coprocessing approach that allows refiners to use multiple biocrudes or circular economy crudes to augment petroleum in the refinery. This offers the option of producing SAF with lower capital expenditures than building new biorefineries. Refiners are also interested in expanding maximum blending limitations and including new sources of biocrudes in the coprocessing slate.

• Enhancing prescreening and Clearinghouse efforts that facilitate a more natural introduction of new pathways to the ASTM community. These efforts will be used by both those who satisfy and don’t satisfy generic annex approaches.

• Advancing to a hybrid approach of a compositional or attributional-based jet fuel spec, perhaps with other related governing mechanisms on certain properties.

• Improving hydrocarbon inspection techniques and processes that can assist with addressing uncertainties or concerns associated with the above.

• Making recommendations to governments who want to assist in process acceleration.

• Setting the stage for additional compositional-based specification-governing mechanisms, which have the potential to reduce time and cost associated with qualification.

There is also substantial effort being taken regarding the understanding and impact reduction of persistent contrails. What we do know is that reductions in fuel sulfur and certain aromatics result in reduced particulate matter (PM) in the jet exhaust, which reduces the formation of ice accretion in areas of atmospheric supersaturation that are the culprit for contrail production. Further, reduction in PM production in the airport environment reduces impact on local air quality. While uncertainties still exist, SAF moves us in the right direction.

One additional bright spot on the horizon could be the inclusion of a mandate in the pending Farm Bill that includes the following mandate in the House-passed version, and matching terminology in the Senate’s draft language pending mark-up: “SEC. 9013. SUSTAINABLE AVIATION FUELS STRATEGY. The Secretary shall establish a Department-wide strategy to advance the production of sustainable aviation fuels” through the consideration of five pillars that align with the industry’s SAF pursuits that enable more robust agricultural, silvicultural and rural economic development opportunities.

So, while uncertainty abounds, progress continues to be made, and could be enhanced. What we do know is that if we don’t build initial facilities with the most promising technologies and feedstocks, we will never achieve learning-curve improvements for production cost reductions over time. We have to keep up the effort. READ MORE

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