The International Air Transport Association (IATA), which is the representative body of the global airline industry, has estimated that the worldwide production of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) in 2022 was 200% higher year-on-year. While, in 2021, total global SAF production came to 100-million litres, IATA expected it to reach at least 300-million litres last year. The association noted that some other, more optimistic, estimates were putting the total SAF production figure for last year as high as 450-million litres – an increase of 350% over the previous year.

Global production of SAF had been accelerating rapidly since 2019. In that year, it amounted to 25-million litres. This jumped to 62.5-million litres in 2020 and surged again to 100-million litres in 2021. In IATA’s opinion, whether last year’s total was 300-million litres or 450-million litres, the SAF industry was now on the verge of a capacity and production ramp-up that would be exponential and take the industry to an already identified production tipping point of 30-billion litres in 2030 – provided it was supported by the right policies.

SAF was seen as a “key contributor” to the fulfilling of the airline industry’s commitment to achieve net-zero carbon emissions aviation by 2050, IATA pointed out. Currently, it was estimated that SAF would be responsible for 65% of the reduction in airline carbon dioxide emissions that achieving this target would require. To achieve this would demand a yearly production of 450- billion litres of SAF in 2050.

“There was at least triple the amount of SAF in the market in 2022 than in 2021. And airlines used every drop, even at very high prices,” highlighted IATA director-general Willie Walsh. “If more was available, it would have been purchased. That makes it clear that it is a supply issue and that market forces alone are insufficient to solve it. Governments, who now share the same 2050 net-zero goal, need to put in place comprehensive production incentives for SAF. It is what they did to successfully transition economies to renewable sources of electricity. And it is what aviation needs to decarbonise.”

So far, more than 450 000 commercial flights have been flown using SAF. And more and more airlines are signing offtake agreements with SAF producers, to buy and use their fuels. Last year, some 40 such offtake agreements were signed.

Currently, all the SAF that is commercially available is produced in biofuel refineries (hydrogen, as a fuel, is still in the experimental stage). These refineries also produced renewable biodiesel and biogas. Their total refining capacity would grow by more than 400% between now and 2025. The aviation sector needed to secure its SAF supply from this total capacity. That, in turn, required governments to establish production incentives for SAF, such as those they had already put in place for biodiesel and biogas.