SAF Development: BizAv’s Collective Influence

Business Aviation’s many users and its trade associations are all exerting pressure on their strategic partners in the wider industrial and commercial world to encourage those partners to offer practical ways to stimulate SAF production.

Business Aviation users are able to wield their collective influence because one attribute they have is that large companies’ senior executives and many business aircraft owners and clients are able to wield considerable political and commercial influence.

They can use that influence adroitly to educate their senior contacts in national and multinational governments, multinational trade organizations and financial institutions throughout the world. In just about every case, Business Aviation users have strong relationships with – and are highly valued clients of – the world’s commercial banks and other financial institutions.

In that regard, says Edwards, the Business Aviation sector – including its trade associations – can exert influence on the global financial sector to provide funding for investments in SAF production resources and the delivery infrastructure SAF will need, whereas going by strict return-on-investment criteria such investments would not make compelling commercial sense today.

New SAF Production Facilities Needed, More Quickly

Part of this overall effort must look at finding ways to bring new production facilities into action more quickly than traditionally has been the case, says Edwards.

“The cost of setting up a [SAF production] plant is immense and it’s getting bigger, while [generating] revenue from feedstocks is a challenge,” he notes. “It may take at least five years to get a [new] plant from design to production, so ways need to be found to get production sooner.”

IBAC and its 15 member organizations – all of them national or regional Business Aviation trade associations – are amplifying their voices by acting in close cooperation with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and others, such as the Air Transport Action Group (ATAG), set up by the airline industry as its environmental-issues champion.

Another aviation-industry organization which may play a very important role in mobilizing Business Aviation sector efforts to push for SAF resource development is the National Air Transportation Association (NATA), the trade association for the United States’ FBO industry, hand-in- hand with its partner organization the Independent FBO Association representing small US FBO operators.

Much of the US Business Aviation industry’s direct uptake of SAF is occurring, and will continue to take place, at the nation’s many FBO facilities which traditionally act as the filling stations for its many thousands of turbine business and private aircraft.

“[NATA] engages in ongoing SAF education efforts and serves as a conduit to link carbon-reduction opportunities with manufacturers, ground handlers, and operators, who will ultimately transition the benefits of the lower carbon fuel to their customers,” Megan Eisenstein, Managing Director, Industry Affairs and Innovation for NATA, told AvBuyer.

“To promote the scale-up of SAF production, NATA is committed to supporting legislative and regulatory policies that incentivize investment in the nascent industry, remove regulatory roadblocks to SAF commercialization, and support research and development of multiple feedstocks and technologies,” Eisenstein adds.

Governmental Legislation Essential to SAF Development

Governmental action in the form of legislation promoting SAF investment is particularly important if SAF usage is to meet the targets set for it by the world’s aviation industry, according to Albert and Edwards.

To date probably the biggest commitment made by any government is the $61 billion that the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has made available through six US government agencies in the form of industry grants and tax credits to encourage SAF production and infrastructure development, says Albert.

This sum is designed to help US refiners meet the 2030 three billion-gallon and 2050 30 billion-gallon SAF production targets set by the Biden Administration’s Sustainable Aviation Fuel Grand Challenge.

Meanwhile, says Edwards, ICAO and its supporting aviation industry partners have a massively important role to play in convincing financiers not only to provide suitable levels of investment funding to allow adequate SAF production but also to make that investment where it is needed globally. 

That is in the localities where SAF is being produced, and from where it must be carried by relevant pipeline and storage infrastructure to its many points of delivery.

That requirement is very likely to mean banks – well-known for being highly conservative in lending and as risk-averse as possible – having to make fuel-refining industry investments in companies and in countries in which they do not make such investments today.

Although refineries in 28 countries make all the conventional jet fuel produced and consumed today, there are reasons to think SAF production could be more widely dispersed geographically, and in a larger number of countries.

Discover the reasons why global disbursement of SAF production will be necessary, and why there’s a need to engage backers via the ‘Page 3’ button below.