Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) are considered to be a critical element in the basket of measures to mitigate aviation’s contribution to climate change.
However, the use of SAF has remained negligible up to 2019 as there are significant technical, environmental and economic barriers limiting the penetration of SAF into the aviation sector.
Additionally, the EASA European Aviation Environmental Report (EAER) published in January 2019, identified a lack of information at European level on the supply and use of SAF within Europe.
EASA launched two studies in 2019 to address those points and now published the reports on its website.
The first study, addressing the barriers of SAF penetration into the market, examines how to incentivise the approval and use of SAF as drop-in fuels in Europe by introducing a SAF Facilitation Initiative. For more information, please see the report ‘Sustainable Aviation Fuel ‘Facilitation Initiative’.
The second study, addressing the lack of SAF information at EU level, identifies a cost effective, robust data stream to monitor the use and supply of SAF, as well as the associated emissions reductions For more information, please see the report ‘Sustainable Aviation Fuel ‘Monitoring System’.
An EASA article on SAF was recently featured in the July edition of Open Access Government, a digital publication focussing on relevant policy issues, such as research and innovation, technology, the environment and energy sector.
For more information, please see the article 'Aviation and the environment: Sustainable Aviation Fuels'.
