The Airline Industry’s Dirty Secret: Clean Jet Fuel Failures

August 12, 2025

Print This Article Share it With Friends

by Joanna Plucinska, Joe Brock, Marleen Kaesebier and Paul Carsten (Reuters) ... But the refinery quietly ceased operations in April. And World Energy’s plans for a second plant in Houston have stalled amid a lack of commitment from the industry, according to Chief Executive Gene Gebolys.

“Some airlines were engaged in a pretty disingenuous effort to put out press releases” overstating their commitment to SAF projects, Gebolys said, without naming any companies. “People sometimes said too much in the past and did too little.”

Still, Gebolys acknowledged that some airlines have made a genuine effort to support SAF producers, while governments also needed to step up with stronger incentives to drive progress.

The termination of United’s fuel purchase contract with World Energy - and the closure of the Paramount refinery - have not previously been reported.

United Airlines said it ended its relationship with World Energy “a few years ago”, without providing a reason. A JetBlue spokesperson said World Energy has been a “valued partner” since 2020 and it will continue working with the company.

...

World Energy’s struggles mirror the plight of dozens of clean fuel startups, according to a Reuters review of the sector. Nearly 20 years after the first commercial flight powered partly by biofuels made the short hop from London to Amsterdam, Reuters found that the airline industry’s plans to go green before regulators start penalising them are little more than a pipe dream.

...

The International Air Transport Association (IATA), a global body that represents 340 airlines, forecasts SAF will account for 0.7% of total jet fuel this year, up from 0.3% in 2024. Air passenger traffic, meanwhile, is expected to rise 6% this year, IATA says.

IATA has set a goal of net zero emissions by 2050, a target that would require airlines to ramp up SAF use to 118 billion gallons annually, a more than 300-fold increase from current production.

...

To scrutinise the industry’s claims, Reuters built its own database of airline SAF initiatives - offering the most comprehensive view yet of the sector’s faltering green progress and revealing that the industry has no clear pathway to hitting net zero targets.

While airlines have announced 165 SAF projects over the past 12 years, only 36 have materialized, Reuters found. Among those, Reuters uncovered problems at three of the largest - including World Energy - that exemplify the systemic challenges plaguing the SAF sector.

...

At the moment, SAF costs three to five times more than jet fuel and some oil company executives argue that there is limited demand from airlines at current prices.

...

According to more than a dozen people directly involved in the sector, airlines play minimal roles in the execution of projects and, in most cases, their only commitment is to buy SAF when their partners produce it.

...

European SAF mandates are expected to cost airlines $2.9 billion in additional fuel purchases and compliance expenses this year, according to IATA estimates. READ MORE

Related articles

Making a Fuel Island Uninvestable: California’s Energy Boiling Point (Engine Technology Forum)
Beyond Broken Eggs: Fixing the SAF Machine (Biofuels Digest)
Angle of Ascent (Ethanol Producer Magazine)
Sustainable aviation fuel loses all momentum with Trump’s cuts (Thred; includes VIDEOs)

Excerpt from Biofuels Digest: ... (T)he reflex to demonize people at the bottom of the Gartner Hype Cycle just because there was euphoria at the top. It’s a tempting narrative — but it’s also a distraction from the real work.

The ambition to decarbonize aviation through Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) hasn’t failed. The technology hasn’t collapsed. The problem is that the SAF ecosystem is a massive, high-momentum machine that’s being asked to shift to a high-cost, high-reward feedstock alternative without the “repairs and maintenance” such a transition demands. That’s a structural challenge, not a moral failing.

...

Airlines say the oil industry isn’t producing enough SAF. Some oil executives reply there’s not enough demand at current prices — three to five times higher than fossil jet fuel. In other words: a standoff at cruising altitude.

The Technology Works — The Structure Doesn’t

The dominant production pathway, HEFA, is proven. It converts waste oils, fats, and greases into jet fuel. The bottleneck is affordable feedstock at scale. Collecting and purifying diverse waste streams is costly and energy-intensive.

Alternatives like Fischer–Tropsch can process waste wood or municipal garbage — but they’re more expensive, technically complex, and still not commercially proven. As one industry voice put it, F-T “remains a pipe dream even with abundant, low-cost feedstock.”

In short: the problem isn’t whether SAF can be made. It’s whether it can be made at the scale, cost, and reliability the aviation sector needs.

...

High plant oil prices funnel incentives toward feedstock traders, not toward bridging the cost gap between plant oils and fossil fuels or between small greenfield refineries and depreciated conventional ones.

A Grand Bargain — aligning a food-policy-driven drop in seed oil demand with fuel-market feedstock needs — could change the math. By intentionally coordinating these markets, rural and urban interests could both win, much as they have in past Farm Bill coalitions. That’s restructuring, not just subsidies — and it’s one ingredient in the omelette.

Signs of Life

Despite the structural headwinds, new capacity is still being built:

LG Chem and Enilive in South Korea have broken ground on the nation’s first HVO/SAF plant, 400,000 tons/year capacity, due 2027.
Moeve and Apical in Spain are investing €1.2B in a second-generation biofuel plant using ag waste and used cooking oil, cutting CO₂ emissions by 75% and recycling all its water.

These projects are happening after the Reuters review, showing there’s still investor belief — if the foundations can be strengthened.

What’s Real — and What’s Not

Not real:

Painting a picture of imminent breakthroughs to burnish green credentials while actual volumes lag far behind.
Believing technology alone will fix the economics.
Expecting that piecemeal grants and handouts will substitute for market restructuring.

Real:

SAF technology works.
The limiting factor is structural: feedstock availability, pricing, and the economics of building new plants versus running legacy fossil refineries.
Fixes require alignment between those with market power, policy influence, and capital.

Five Fixes That Matter

Structural Reform – Address the feedstock bottleneck through solutions like the Grand Bargain, creating new, stable supply pathways.
Coordinated Investment – Move beyond one-off “marquee” announcements; form airline-producer consortiums for large-scale projects, as SGP BioEnergy’s Randy Letang has urged.
Stronger, Predictable Incentives – Policy stability is key; sudden shifts or rollbacks will stall investment.
Transparency and Realism – Publish roadmaps and project databases grounded in proven technologies and commercial operations.
Technology and Feedstock Diversification – Keep HEFA scaling, but advance other SAF pathways to reduce reliance on limited waste oils and fats.

...

The SAF journey isn’t a quick fix — it’s a deep rebuild. Demonizing players at the bottom of the hype cycle wastes energy that should be spent on structural repair. READ MORE

Excerpt from Ethanol Producer Magazine:

While there may be only one ethanol-to-jet (ETJ) pathway registered with EPA to generate D4 RINs right now—LanzaJet’s facility in Soperton, Georgia—experts speaking in Omaha at the International Fuel Ethanol Workshop & Expo this June all said they expect ETJ to become a viable source of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in the future. The goals are substantial. In the U.S., the SAF Grand Challenge calls for 3 billion gallons of SAF by 2030 and 35 billion gallons by 2050. Based on announcements, 2025 SAF production is expected to reach 660 million gallons globally, according to Azadeh Rohani, senior consultant with Worley Consulting. The International Air Transport Association projects 120 billion gallons of SAF will be needed annually to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

With 850,000 flights operated using SAF since 2011, Tim Hughes, project director with the Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative, says the aviation industry is moving forward in decarbonizing its fuel.

Other data collected by the Air Transport Action Group indicates that globally:

• $45 billion dollars have been committed by airlines to date in forward purchase agreements for SAF;

• 69 airports are regularly supplied with SAF;

• 50 airlines have committed to 2030 SAF goals ranging from 5-30%, with most committed to 10%.

• 20 million metric tons of SAF uptake by 2030 could be possible under proposed and committed policies.

Eight SAF technology pathways and three coprocessing pathways have been tested and approved by ASTM, Hughes says, with the HEFA pathway being the most prominent right now. “But we’re also looking at alcohol-to-jet. And, we know that in laboratories we can take any type of carbon source and produce a fuel out of it. Some are more complicated than others, and some require a lot of energy in order to make [them] work.” CAAFI’s technical committee, made up of companies like Boeing, Airbus, GE and Pratt & Whitney, look closely at any new fuel, he says, to make sure it performs at high altitudes, is stable and safe, and works in all different engine types around the world.

ETJ Opportunities
“Ethanol-to-jet can be competitive compared to HEFA, the main process at the moment for SAF, keeping in mind the limitations we see with HEFA feedstock availability,” says Worley Consulting’s Rohani.

...

ETJ compares favorably to HEFA in terms of carbon intensity reduction and lands slightly higher in cost of production, Rohani says. (See accompanying chart, “Technologies: Typical CI and COP for SAF”) When comparing soybean oil, the main HEFA feedstock, to corn, the SAF yield per acre of corn is five to six times greater than the SAF yield from an acre of soybeans, Rohani adds, another point in corn ethanol’s favor.

Looking at the cost of production for ETJ, ethanol feedstock is the largest component, followed by capital cost.

...

ETJ, however, will only be profitable if the ethanol feedstock and ETJ process meet the carbon reduction thresholds prescribed in the various incentive programs. “Those solutions are really dependent on a specific case,” Rohani says. Carbon capture and sequestration of the CO2 from fermenters offers the biggest opportunity for CI reduction—around 30%. Integrating CCS with cogeneration offers another 20-30% reduction. Using low-carbon hydrogen, low-carbon power and capturing carbon in the ETJ process itself offer smaller CI reductions. “The steps you take to reduce carbon intensity gives you higher [45Z] credits per gallon.” In the example she gave in her FEW presentation, the total CI reductions could receive $1.10 in 45Z credits. Note: after the FEW, changes were made to the 45Z biofuels tax credit when the OBBB Act was signed into law by President Donald J. Trump on July 4.

...

Globally, governments take two approaches. One focuses on carbon intensity and greenhouse gas reduction with various incentives. In the other approach, governments mandate blending volumes. Then there are book-and-claim programs being developed, alongside other voluntary carbon reduction frameworks promoted by international aviation organizations like IATA and CORSIA.

In Europe, the ReFuelEU mandate began this year, requiring 2% blends, increasing to 6% by 2030 and 70% by 2050.

...

In Asia, China, Thailand, South Korea and Japan have mandated SAF blending levels. In South America, Brazil has its Fuel for the Future program, Chile has a Road Map for SAF and Columbia is developing a program.

...

But unlike established biofuels, where compliance details wait until the end, SAF specifications and regulations need to be considered from the beginning. SAF needs to first meet ASTM specifications, she (Kristine Klavers, managing director at EcoEngineers) explains. ETJ has an approved ASTM pathway with non-specific requirements that can be challenging to navigate.

Getting approval using a different process can take years. Then, the fuel itself has to meet ASTM specifications. ASTM isn’t a regulation, she adds, “it’s a specification created by engine manufacturers. They’re not going to let anything through unless they’re 100% certain that their airplanes are safe using the fuel.”

...

State credits can be stacked on top of the RINs value, but each state’s program differs slightly.

...

In the Q&A after their presentations, the speakers were asked bluntly: Does ethanol-to-jet stand on its own from a profitability point of view, without all the stackable credits?

Rohani replied no. “That’s a definite answer, and that’s part of the challenge for the future,” she said. The cost of production, at the moment, is higher than the revenue that you could get without the incentives. Maybe in the future—the technologies are getting mature fast and there will be advances. The price of utilities, the price of feedstock, all of those would have a contribution, but without those incentives, at the moment, it’s not profitable.” READ MORE

Excerpt from Thred: Promising SAF startups are already reporting delayed projects, investor pullback, and increased uncertainty around long-term viability.

Without policy stability or federal backing, the high production costs of green fuels make it near impossible to compete with traditional jet fuel, especially in a market now chock-full of deregulation and fossil fuel favouritism.

As you may recall, the previously mentioned bust-up between Musk and Trump was sparked by sweeping slashes on tax credits for electric vehicles – a financial mechanic the Tesla boss had relied on to run his EV empire. The provision has also removed this financial lever for SAF producers, creating what industry insiders describe as a ‘chilling effect’ on the industry’s innovation.

...

The rot isn’t just applicable to environmental goals, either. A robust SAF industry had promise of new jobs, domestic energy security, and technological leadership. With this all now resting on a knife-edge, these companies don’t have the luxury of thinking big and are focused purely on survival.

The irony is that Trump is shooting himself in the foot, too. Considering he has repeatedly stressed a desire to bring energy production home to native soil, neglecting aviation fuel rubbishes any prospect of the US spearheading a solution to decarbonising a massively-stubborn industry.

Instead, the initiative has been handed to SAF companies in Europe and Asia, where governments are doubling down on green aviation projects. France, the Netherlands, and Japan have ramped up their production targets, recognising not just the ecological imperative but the economic opportunity that comes with propelling the technology forward. READ MORE; includes VIDEOS