Contributor - Middle East

Peter Shaw-Smith

Major OEMs announced significant sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) financing initiatives at the Farnborough Airshow on Tuesday in a move to wrest control of the fight against climate change away from the major oil companies.&nbsp;
A group led by Airbus and including the Air France-KLM Group, Associated Energy Group, BNP Paribas, Mitsubishi HC Capital Inc., and Qantas Airways, co-invested in a SAF financing fund to accelerate production of the green fuel.&nbsp;The collaborators worked with Burnham Sterling Asset Management to establish the SAF Financing Alliance (SAFFA) investment fund, in which Airbus serves as an anchor investor. Commitments by the seven partners amount to around $200 million.
“Each partner brings experience and financial expertise to the fund with the ambition to accelerate the availability of SAF by investing mainly in technologically mature SAF-producing projects using, for instance, waste-based feedstocks,” Airbus said in a statement issued at the Farnborough Show. “Investments will be diversified across various SAF production pathways and also by region.”
Each partner might then enter into priority contracts to secure SAF offtakes from the various projects in which SAFFA will invest for its allocated volumes. SAFFA's focus centers on SAF eligible for RefuelEU Aviation or CORSIA (Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation) certification.
Many believe that the urgency of developing SAF has increased the pressure on the world’s top OEMs to take steps to deliver the fuel type, after demand for cleaner fuels has met with painfully slow progress. In addition, oil and gas companies seem as keen as ever to press ahead with the development of new hydrocarbon wells and resources.
In a separate development, Boeing and Clear Sky, an investment company dedicated to aviation sustainability, are collaborating to accelerate SAF development with an initial project to help in testing and advancing the UK’s Firefly Green Fuels’ technology to increase sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production in the UK.&nbsp;
“SAF offers the greatest opportunity to decarbonize aviation, and the industry’s collective challenge of bringing it to scale globally requires new sustainable pathways,” said Brian Moran, Boeing’s chief sustainability officer. “Clear Sky combines many years of investment expertise with knowledge on aviation’s decarbonization challenges. Firefly’s technology holds transformative potential as the SAF feedstock, sewage waste, is accessible in all regions of the globe.”
According to Boeing, SAF today represents 0.1% of global jet fuel use. In the UK, the pending mandate to achieve 10 percent SAF in the jet-fuel mix by 2030 will require 1.2 million tonnes of SAF by 2030, increasing to 7 million tonnes by 2050, ICF’s UK Net Zero Carbon Roadmap said.
Boeing and Clear Sky’s investment demonstrates progress on the roadmap given the available UK sewage waste can meet a significant proportion of the UK’s SAF requirement.
“In a world where demand for SAF outstrips available supply, Firefly is paving the way to cost-competitive and globally available fuel,” said James Hygate, CEO of Firefly. “With the support of Clear Sky and Boeing, we are propelling toward our goal of commercial production in the UK by 2029, and rapid replication across the globe.”
The new UK Labour Government's SAF mandate will start in 2025 at 2 percent of total UK jet fuel demand, increase on a linear basis to 10 percent in 2030 and then to 22 percent in 2040. "From 2040, the obligation will remain at 22 percent until there is greater certainty regarding SAF supply," a statement made to the UK Parliament by transport minister Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill said on Monday.
Elsewhere, B2B software services provider American Express Global Business Travel and Shell Aviation have announced a new agreement to support the growth of the Avelia SAF program, one of the world's first book-and-claim platforms for SAF, with more than 30 corporates and airlines participating.
The Middle East has shown the potential to turn into a major SAF production hub. Ted O’Byrne, the CEO of Saudi aircraft lessor AviLease, told AIN on the eve of the 2023 Paris Airshow that his company was keen to <a href="https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/air-transport/2023-06-13/saudi-arabias-avilease-bundle-saf-leases">bundle</a> SAF with its leased aircraft to speed up the dissemination of the fuel technology.
Responding to a question from AIN, Krishnan Narayanan, founding partner at Clear Sky, said he saw enormous potential for the development of SAF in Saudi Arabia, in the same way that it had become the world’s dominant oil producer in the past 50 years.&nbsp;
"No one entity, company or organization is going to be able to make this happen on their own," he said of the efforts to develop SAF worldwide. "We are incredibly energized about this partnership with Boeing."

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