Pragmatic Assessment of Meeting the 2030 U.S. Sustainable Aviation Fuel Goal

Details

• Creators:
  Brandt, Kristin ; Martinez Valencia, Lina ; Camenzind, Dane ; Martulli, Alessandro ; Malina, Robert ; Allroggen, Florian ; Wolcott, Michael P.
• Corporate Creators:
  United States. Department of Transportation. Federal Aviation Administration. Center of Excellence for Alternative Jet Fuels and Environment ; Washington State University
• Corporate Contributors:
  United States. Department of Transportation. Federal Aviation Administration. Office of Environment and Energy
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  Abatement Cost ASCENT Aviation Fuels Biodiesel Fuels Factors Of Production Policy Renewable Diesel, Sustainable Transportation
• Publication/ Report Number:
  j.biombioe.2025.108516
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biombioe.2025.108516
• Resource Type:
  Journal Article
• Right Statement:
  Open Access; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Geographical Coverage:
  United States
• Corporate Publisher:
  Elsevier
• Abstract:
  Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production is essential for decarbonizing the aviation sector in the short and midterm as well as maintaining the global competitiveness of U.S. airlines, supporting job creation, and ensuring U.S. energy independence. The near-term U.S. SAF target, set by the SAF Grand Challenge, is 11.4 billion liters (3 billion gallons) of domestic SAF production by 2030, with a minimum 50 % reduction in lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions. In 2024 U S. SAF production was less than 2 % of the stated goal, demonstrating that the remaining production growth is significant. Barriers to scale-up include technological readiness, feedstock availability, and delays in facility development. This study uses a database of U.S. SAF production announcements to assess the feasibility of attaining the 2030 targets by analyzing production potential, construction paradigms, feedstock availability, and CO2 abatement cost. Our analysis indicates that the hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids pathway will dominate U.S. SAF production through 2030, with notable contributions from alcohol to jet and coprocessing. However, probable U.S. production of SAF is predicted to fall short of the current goal by 3.6-billion liters although there are scenarios that meet the goal. Existing U.S. policies favor on-road transportation fuels and are insufficient to drive necessary SAF production scale-up. Additional measures, such as non-government scope 3 emission purchases, long-term incentives, a national low-carbon fuel standard, or volume mandates, are options to close the gap. These measures are needed to ensure the profitability of SAF production and competitiveness with renewable diesel.
• Content Notes:
  This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 1.0 Universal (CC BY 1.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/). Please cite this article as: Kristin Brandt, Lina Martinez-Valencia, Dane Camenzind, Alessandro Martulli, Robert Malina, Florian Allroggen, Michael Wolcott, Pragmatic assessment of meeting the 2030 U.S. sustainable aviation fuel goal, Biomass and Bioenergy, Volume 206, 2026, 108516, ISSN 0961-9534, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biombioe.2025.108516.
• Format:
  PDF
• Funding:
  13-C-AJFE-WaSU-013
• Collection(s):
  Federal Aviation Administration
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:40bf4ff6bf6876a1aab8d95d291615cec95b21853301d7992f689c92c5f7791066a1a4174d7792ea56179d72def665c044a929c1e8eae1489dde6966113924af
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/88079/dot_88079_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 5.40 MB ]