Biofuels will play an important role in decarbonizing hard-to-electrify portions of the transportation sector in the coming years. Even with modest annual growth, air transportation and related emissions are expected to double by 2050. Because sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is the only way that medium- to long-haul commercial aviation can be decarbonized in the near term, a U.S. governmentwide “SAF Grand Challenge” was issued to encourage industry to develop capabilities to produce SAF, reduce cost, improve sustainability, build supply chains, and scale production capabilities. The targets are to expand current domestic SAF production by 130 times to 3 billion gallons per year by 2030 and then further by 12 times to 35 billion gallons per year by 2050 while achieving life cycle GHG emissions reduction of at least 50% relative to fossil Jet A.
Following the announcement of the SAF Grand Challenge, the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency, and Federal Aviation Administration collaboratively developed a comprehensive strategy, outlined in the SAF Grand Challenge Roadmap, to inform stakeholders of the actions necessary to achieve the above volumetric targets. The purpose of this study “Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) State-of-Industry Report: State of SAF Production Process” by NREL is to provide an assessment of the current state of the SAF production industry and identify challenges and hurdles that industry may face in delivering the 2030 goals. This assessment is for the potential feedstocks and conversion pathways expected to contribute to 2030 goals and will generally follow action areas in the SAF Grand Challenge: feedstocks, conversion technology, supply chain, and policy and valuation.
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