IATA: SAF production should reach 69 billion liters in 2028 |

IATA is positive there will be enough facilities in 2028 to produce 69 billion liters or 55 million tonnes of renewable fuel to make sustainable aviation fuels (SAF). As of June, the airline association has identified 130 global projects, up from 61 projects IATA identified a year ago. This could grow as new initiatives emerge, IATA said during a presentation on the final day of the Annual General Meeting in Istanbul. IATA: SAF production should reach 69 billion liters in 2028. In 2022, only 300 million liters or 240.000 tonnes of SAF was produced, while global jet fuel demand was 254 metric tons. So only 0.1 percent SAF was available to the airline industry. “Zero point one percent is virtually nothing,” said Marie Owens Thomsen, IATA’s Senior Vice President of Sustainability & Chief Economist. The plan is that there should be enough SAF to provide about 62 percent of the carbon mitigation needed in 2050. This translates into 449 billion liters. The 130 projects that IATA has identified include thirty countries with 85 producers who have the commitment to produce SAF by 2028. It usually takes three to five years from a project announcement to commercialization. Over this period, production should increase from fourteen million tonnes to forty in 2024, 45 in 2026, and 55 million tonnes in 2028. SAF production is currently limited to some regions in the world. The biggest capacity is on the US West Coast and in Singapore, where facilities have a maximum capacity of 2.6 Mt. Next is Finland, with a production facility capable of one metric ton. Smaller facilities are available in The Netherlands, the UK, Italy, and the US. More facilities will come online this year, including the first alcohol-to-jet fuel facility in the US. The picture will be very different in five years, with more production facilities in the US, Europe, Asia, Australia, the Gulf region, and Latin America. Absent is Africa, while Russia and the former CIS states are not included in IATA’s outlook. Hemant Mistry, Director of Energy Transition, pointed out that these facilities can also produce renewable fuels like diesel and naphtha. This depends on the feedstock and pathway. “Actually, SAF will compete, so it is important that the production of SAF is incentivized in the same way as how the other fuels are incentivized,” Mistry said. This requires government support and financing to develop new projects. It needs to be made sure that refining facilities are optimized for SAF. Different pathways required Some 85 percent of SAF will be produced using the HEFA (Hydroprocessed Esters and Fatty Acids) pathway, a procedure to make the fuel from waste, cooking oil, or grease feedstocks. The problem is that feedstock for HEFA is rather limited, which could eventually slow down SAF production. Hemant Mistry said it is important that other pathways are used, like alcohol-to-jet, syngas-Fischer-Tropsch, or power-to-liquid. As these pathways are still being developed, more effort must be going into research and development. This will help to increase SAF production for the airline industry. From the first-generation feedstock that includes food-grade fats and oils, it is important to get to the third generation with bio/agricultural wastes and residues. But it should be demonstrated that SAFs do not promote nor add incremental water, land, and chemical usage throughout their lifecycle. Nor should they negatively affect disforestation, soil productivity, and biodiversity. “This third-generation feedstock is really the most effective for us as an industry as people move towards maintaining those stringent sustainability criteria and also scalability. Because of the availability, there is the potential to reduce input costs as well,” Mistry said. This will not only benefit aviation but other industries as well. Blending mandates IATA is not making predictions for SAF production beyond 2028. But outlook from Dutch SAF company SkyNRG said last week that it expects that blending mandates in the European Union and the United Kingdom will be enough to satisfy demand in 2030. Mandates are expected to reach 4.2 Mt, of which 3.3 Mt is projected to be available. The remainder is likely to come on stream with more projects. In the US, demand will be 8.5 Mt in 2030, and the expected availability is 6.2 Mt, but HEFA feedstock is under pressure. More refineries need to come stream to meet the 2050 mandates of forty metric tonnes in the EU and the UK and 77 to 100 Mt in the US. Hemant Mistry points out that while these mandates look encouraging, “we still have to make sure that we have the right number of output. Obviously, it is difficult to predict what renewable fuel capacity and solutions like e-fuels will be produced by 2050. Our focus is more: is it achievable if we go along these lines? We all have to look and make sure that SAF is not a forgotten output because of incentives that are for other fuels than SAF.” United and Emirates investments While IATA is looking with great expectations to energy suppliers to invest in producing renewable fuels, two of its members have recently announced their own investments. United Airlines said in March that it would invest $5 million in a carbon capture company and another $5 million in a start-up that produces fuel from algae. In January, the carrier said it would invest in a company that produces SAF from ethanol. Last week, Qantas announced a $400 million fund, partly funded by Airbus. Emirates announced in May that it would invest $200 million in R&D of advanced fuel and energy solutions for aviation, not to be confused with the uptake of SAF itself. During Tuesday’s media roundtable in Istanbul, AirInsight asked Sir Tim Clark to elaborate a bit more on the plan: “The whole thing for us and the aviation industry is trying to deal with the transition from fossil fuels in whatever comes next. But we have to fly on fossil fuels, there is no other way of doing it. I know the UAE is a fossil fuel producer, but they are able to take some money that comes out of fossil fuels in developing hugely critical technologies for the e-fuel era. That is exactly what they are doing. They have vast solar arrays in the desert, there are great initiatives for green hydrogen production and they are investing in the technology that is out there or being developed.” The artist's impression of the Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum Solar Park in Dubai should generate electricity to produce green e-fuels and hydrogen. (Siemens) “As far as Emirates is concerned, it is $200 million. I kind of was uncomfortable about the way that the airline industry was responding to the 2050 mandate. We want to do it, but we say: “We can’t do it, unless others fund it”, because we are airline managers. We tended to labor that for some time, but that isn’t going to cut it. We have to do better as an airline community. So I thought as a kind of fold leadership if we could actually say that we put our money into things like e-fuels and green hydrogen, that’s huge.” One billion dollars Tim Clark added: "Technology is moving at pace in multiple areas. Since we announced the $200 million, we have had multiple players come along that say what they are doing. The difficulty is how to sort all that out. But it started something. United is on it, they have a similar amount of money, and Qantas has just announced their fund. I would like to think that the airline community puts up a billion dollars in working with partners that are in the R&D business to accelerate and fund to an extent the whole process of getting there." "If we rely on governments and other entities that promise things to do, we may be waiting a long time. We can’t wait that long, we have got to do better than that. The $200 million is a token, but it is a start. I am certainly minded to say that we need to do more than moan and groan that it is not fair. We can only say: it is not good enough.” Clark said that to produce enough green e-fuels, it will be inevitable that nuclear power is needed to produce them.

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