Figure 2 Opening of LanzaJet Freedom Pines Fuels in Soperton, Georgia, USA, January 2024
low-value wastes, residues, byproducts, and non-food crops into jet fuel, thereby foregoing the harmful process of extracting fossil carbon from underground. It is the ultimate expression of the circular economy in practice. By converting often harmful or otherwise discarded sources into fuel, the process can deliver a range of societal benefits, including improved waste management, ecosystem clean-up and restoration, as well as enhanced water, soil, and air quality. This complements the physical output of the renewable fuel itself, which, through its full production lifecycle, offers an average carbon reduction of around 70-80% compared to traditional Jet A1. While emission reductions will also come from airlines integrating newer aircraft models with lighter airframes and improved fuel efficiencies, in tandem with more optimised air operations, the aviation industry recognises that more than 60% of its emission reductions will need to come from the production and use of SAF. Based on that projection, the industry will need hundreds of billions of litres of SAF by 2050. Where are we now? It is important to remember that the industry only started adoption and scaling of SAF in very
recent years. In 2019, it was estimated that global volumes sat at just 25 million litres. Fast- forward to 2025, and this figure has grown to 2.5 billion litres, representing a 100x increase in just six years. While this figure still represents only 0.7% of current total jet fuel demand, this rate of change is profound and will only continue along this trajectory. That said, the industry is currently on the verge of a tipping point. To date, SAFs have predominantly been sourced from a mature technology that creates fuel from waste fats and lipids, such as used cooking oil from industrial kitchens. The problem is that this bio-oil conversion pathway, known as hydrotreatment of fatty acids and esters (HEFA), will reach a plateau caused by the availability of sustainable waste oils to process into fuel. While HEFA will continue to play an important role going forward, its volumes will soon plateau at a maximum annual threshold, which, when stretched out to 2050, may account for only 5-10% of overall SAF volume needs. Adding to the challenge, while there are several other operationally approved SAF production pathways that can leverage alternative sources of waste or feedstocks, none have yet delivered volumes of fuel at a commercial scale. To distil this down into a very clear takeaway:
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