FUSION Issue 3-2026 DIGITAL - Flipbook - Page 6
AVIATION
The fuel that
has to work
Sustainable aviation fuel is aviation's best near-term hope for
decarbonisation. Five years after the industry committed to net zero by
2050, the gap between ambition and reality is widening. And composites
manufacturers are more central to the solution than most people realise.
Every aircraft flying today burns fossil fuel.
Sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, is the industry's
best near-term answer to that problem: a dropin replacement made from waste materials,
agricultural residues, or synthetic processes that
cuts lifecycle carbon emissions significantly
compared to conventional jet fuel. It works
in existing engines, on existing routes, with no
changes to airport infrastructure. In principle,
the path forward is straightforward. In practice, it
is anything but.
At the IATA Annual General Meeting in Rio de
Janeiro in June, the mood around sustainable
aviation fuel was not what the industry
had hoped. Willie Walsh, the organisation's
outgoing Director General, told delegates
plainly that SAF production in 2026 would
account for just 0.8 per cent of global aviation
fuel consumption. Production has roughly
doubled between 2024 and 2025, which sounds
encouraging until you consider that 0.8 per
cent of the world's jet fuel is, by any measure,
a very long way from the volumes needed to
make a meaningful dent in aviation's emissions
trajectory.
“ The net zero target relies
on SAF providing up to 58
per cent of the required
emissions reductions.
Current production is 0.8%
of fuel use. The gap is not
a rounding error. ”
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The net zero by 2050 commitment, made
collectively by airlines in 2021, relies on SAF
providing somewhere between 38 and 58 per
cent of the emissions reductions required to
reach that target. To get there, annual SAF
production needs to reach around 500 million
tonnes. Current production sits at 2.4 million
tonnes. The gap is not a rounding error. It is a
fundamental challenge that the industry has
not yet found a credible path through.
For the people who build the aircraft that
will fly on this fuel, including the composite
manufacturers, surface finishers, and advanced
materials suppliers who form the backbone of
aerospace production, the story does not begin
and end with fuel chemistry. It runs directly
through the materials and manufacturing
processes they work with every day.
Why the numbers
are so di昀昀icult
The challenge with SAF is not that the
technology does not exist. It does.
Hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids, powerto-liquid synthesis, alcohol-to-jet processes:
the production pathways are understood,
and refineries around the world are beginning
to invest in them seriously. TotalEnergies is
commissioning new SAF production capacity
across multiple European sites this year.
Thailand commissioned its first dedicated SAF
facility in March 2026. Singapore has introduced
a mandatory SAF blend at Changi Airport,
funded through a passenger levy.
The problem is scale and economics. SAF
currently costs airlines between two and five
times as much as conventional jet fuel, and
even with that premium, supply is insufficient
to meet the mandates that regulators are
beginning to impose. The EU's ReFuelEU Aviation
regulation and the UK's SAF mandate both require
increasing blend percentages from 2026 onwards.
Airlines complying with those mandates in 2025
collectively paid a premium of around 2.9
billion US dollars for the limited SAF that
was available, according to IATA. That cost,
ultimately, flows through the aviation supply
chain and shapes the investment decisions of
every business connected to it.
The supply constraint is partly a feedstock
problem. The most commercially mature
SAF production route uses waste fats, oils,
and greases as its primary input. The supply
of those feedstocks is finite, and aviation
is competing for them with road transport
biodiesel, which benefits from more
established policy frameworks and often more
favourable economics.
