Doubling in attendance from its debut in 2023, the North American SAF Conference & Expo drew over 500 industry stakeholders to discuss progress and double down on initiatives to reach the near- and long-term goals of the U.S. SAF Grand Challenge.
Opening the event, held in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on Sept. 11-13, was Steve Csonka, executive director of the Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative. He began by providing an overview of challenge, which includes a near-term goal delivering 3 billion gallons of SAF in the United States by 2030, with at least a 50% reduction in lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions. “Secondly, [the challenge requires] a full replacement of petroleum-based jet fuel with SAF by 2050, estimated to entail about 35 billion gallons per year usage in that timeframe, with certain assumptions on the growth profile of the industry,” Csonka said. “And then, a subsequent commitment through the Clean Fuels and Products Shot, which was introduced last year to increase our greenhouse gas emission reductions to 55% and beyond in the midterm.”
Activities of the SAF Grand Challenge are being guided by a roadmap that relies on stakeholder input to determine the barriers that need to be addressed and how, Csonka said. “Part of CAAFI’s role working with the SAF Grand Challenge is not only to provide thought leadership based on our experience to date, but to create these kinds of convening activities where collaborators can learn about progress and further engage with government teams.”
Csonka added that the SAF Grand Challenge team will have an implementation framework report and progress report ready to share in the coming months. He emphasized the unique nature of the challenge, in having so many government agencies working together to achieve a common goal. “The SAF Grand Challenge truly does infuse the work of nine federal agencies, with the efforts of the commercial sectors, various producers and end users, and as enabled by various policies and congressional funding,” he said. Following Csonka, representatives from the key contributing departments — the USDA, Transportation Department and Energy Department—discussed attributes of their work.
Three Years In
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack recorded remarks that were played at the event, which included the announcement of a SAF Grand Challenge metrics dashboard fact sheet to help track figures and stay on target.
U.S. SAF production was at 5 million gallons in 2021, growing to 52 million gallons by the first half of 2024, he said, highlighting the new opportunities the SAF industry is creating for farmers to earn extra income, tap into value-added, climate-smart agriculture markets and help with the clean energy transition. “USDA has also partnered with the Treasury Department to expand farmer participation in SAF through the 40B USDA Climate Smart Agriculture Pilot Program,” he said. “This is our first step toward incorporating climate-smart ag practices like cover crops and reduced tillage into renewable fuel policies …”
Robert Bonnie, undersecretary of the USDA, said the SAF industry represents “an enormous opportunity for U.S. agriculture,” and that the USDA’s focus is currently on three main challenges in terms of policy and how to boost farmer interest in SAF and the commodities necessary to do so. The first, he said, is quickly scaling up climate-smart practices. “Two, is measuring, monitoring, reporting, verification and how we can make sure we have the science and wherewithal … to track CI scores in U.S. commodities … and three, how do we create a system that allows us to track those CI scores and commodities through a supply chain?” He noted that (through the Inflation Reduction Act) $20 billion has been committed to the Agriculture Department for the scaling up of climate-smart commodities practices across the country.
Months ago, Bonnie added, the USDA put out a request for information regarding the creation of a standard to track CI scores through the supply chain. “This is the third big [aforementioned] challenge, making sure we create a system that has public confidence … that we track low-carbon commodities through the supply chain. … USDA is looking at potential ways of creating a standard that could be embedded in future biofuels policy, and there will be more to come on that in the coming weeks and months ahead.”
Following Bonnie, Annie Petsonk, assistant secretary for Aviation and International Affairs at the Transportation Department, discussed the most pressing aspects of SAF policy and implementation. “In terms of the SAF Grand Challenge, while 35 billion gallons of SAF by 2035 is very ambitious, what’s really ambitious is the 3 billion gallons by 2030,” she said. “Because if we can get to the 3 billion gallons by 2030, it means that we will have the policy, architecture, infrastructure and supply chain in place to get to the 35-billion-gallon goal.”
Petsonk said the government agency partners want to hear from stakeholders on three aspects of SAF policy and implementation. “The first is clarity … clarity on what counts as sustainable aviation fuel, how you measure it, and the life cycle emissions modelling its used … we were deeply involved and engaged in the revisions of the GREET model that we’ve developed for 40B implementation, and we are looking forward to working with our interagency partners as we move forward on guidance for 45Z.”
Consistency was the second aspect that Petsonk said the government wants to hear about from stakeholders. “We know that you need a set of rules and guidance that you can follow over time. Why do you need that? Because agriculture is an activity that depends on working over longer and longer periods of time, and aviation, frankly, is one of the sectors with the longest-lived capital stock for its infrastructure—airports and airplanes, and decades of planning, implementation and use of those.”
Petsonk said continuity is the final aspect about which stakeholders are urged to provide feedback. “Policy changes … that creates difficulty for investors who are looking for long-term returns on the capital that they put into this sector,” she said.
“I hear over and over again from investors, ‘Well, two-year tax credit, a five-year tax credit, is the aviation industry’s commitment to sustainability durable over time?
Because otherwise, we’re going to pull back on making the kinds of extended investments that are needed to achieve the goals of the SAF Grand Challenge.’ ”
Petsonk also discussed engagement in the international arena, highlighting global SAF mandates in other countries such as the United Kingdom and the European Union, and emphasized the importance of the U.S.’s ability to compete in the global market. “So, everything we can do in the U.S. to support and incentivize production of SAF here at home is vital,” she said.
The Road Ahead
Laurence Wildgoose, assistant administrator for policy, international affairs and environment at the Federal Aviation Administration, provided an update on the FAA’s Fueling Aviation’s Sustainable Transition grant program. In August, $291 million was awarded to 16 projects in two categories, he said—$244.5 million for 22 projects that will reduce, transport, blend or store SAF, and for scoping studies related to SAF infrastructure need, as well as $46.5 million for 14 projects that will help develop, demonstrate or apply low-emission aviation technologies. He gave a few examples of the projects being supported, including $16.8 million to Gevo Inc. to convert its existing biofuel facility in Luverne, Minnesota, into a fully integrated alcohol-to-jet production facility, and $240,000 to the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to conduct a study of regional supply chains, infrastructure and distribution needs to enable SAF deployment.
Valerie Sarisky-Reed, director of bioenergy at the U.S. DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, filled attendees in on the previously mentioned roadmap implementation report, taking a deeper dive into progress made on the U.S. SAF Grand Challenge thus far. “The White House announcement of the SAF Grand Challenge happened in 2021 … a year later, the working group came together and created the road map, which was established to get into the detail necessary to meet the aggressive goals of the SAF Grand Challenge,” she said. “It’s incredibly aggressive to get to 3 million gallons, so some of the goals are directed right at that volumetric goal, which is just as important as getting to 35 million gallons by the year 2050, and a 50% or better greenhouse gas emissions reduction.”
Sarisky-Reed referenced the fact sheet published along with the dashboard, which she emphasized “is really important. We heard the fact that domestic SAF production, since the start of the grand challenge, has grown 10%. On a graphic, it looks really impressive, but we all know that’s in millions of gallons, and we need to be in billions of gallons. So, while it’s exciting, we have a long way to go.”
The dashboard will enable the tracking of metrics such as the status of potential feedstocks, and where technology is in terms of commercial readiness, Sarisky-Reed said. “And as you’ll note, through the dashboard, you’ll see that between 2.6 [billion] and 4.9 billion gallons per year of SAF capacity has been announced. That’s really incredible; that will get us to our goal and beyond, however, these are [just] announcements. So, we know that we’re at a very tentative time to try to ensure that we can keep the program strong, keep the momentum strong and clear the pathway to these facilities getting built and producing the fuel.”
Following updates from SAF producers and suppliers including Montana Renewables, LanzaJet, Phillips 66, World Energy and AvFuel, was an update on the Minnesota SAF Hub.
Leading the Charge
The formation of the Minnesota SAF Hub was announced one year ago at the inaugural North American SAF Conference & Expo, with major partners including the Greater MSP Partnership, Bank of America, Delta Air Lines, Ecolab and Xcel Energy. At this year’s event, the coalition discussed major developments and discussed the past year’s accomplishments toward operating the first large-scale, end-to-end SAF value chain in the U.S. In particular, the partners announced the first SAF blending facility in Minnesota, which will be built by Flint Hills Resources in collaboration with Delta Air Lines. In the early stages of development, the facility will blend up to 30 million gallons of neat SAF at Flint Hills’ Pine Bend refinery in Rosemount, Minnesota, and is expected to be completed in late 2025. Shell will supply the neat SAF, which will be delivered via Flint Hills’ existing pipeline to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, Delta’s second-largest hub.
Peter Carter, executive vice president of external affairs at Delta Air Lines, joined several of the hub’s partner representatives on stage to discuss progress toward goals thus far. “We kicked off the Minnesota SAF Hub at this conference one year ago, and what a year it’s been—it’s incredible to see where we are only after a single year,” he said. “At Delta Air Lines, we set a goal in Feb 2020 that as an airline, we would be net zero from a carbon perspective by 2025, and that by 2030, we would use 10% SAF in our jet fuel. I will tell you that, at the time we made those goals, we knew they were audacious. But sitting where we are today, I can tell you that we had no idea how audacious they really were.”
Carter said Delta has learned a lot over the four-plus years since it set its net-zero goals. “Delta Air Lines alone burns 4 billion gallons of fuel every year … 90% of our carbon footprint is jet fuel.”
Carter highlighted Delta’s carbon reduction initiatives outside of SAF, which includes buying the most efficient aircraft engines possible and refleeting with aircraft that are 20% more fuel efficient. “We also really focus on how we fly these aircraft, such as making sure when we land we get off our auxiliary power unit, which [runs on] jet fuel and onto the electricity grid as soon as possible,” he said.
“Just that alone saved us something like 20 million gallons of jet fuel last year. How we land, how we fly … our routing, those kinds of things [matter]. What became crystal clear very quickly though, was that the real way to get us where we need to go is going to be through sustainable aviation fuel.”
Originally shared by Biomass Magazine, October 10, 2024. Title updated for clarity and purpose.