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“Sustainable aviation fuels are becoming more and more relevant to aerospace and business aviation,” said Laurence Casia, Bombardier’s manager of product strategy and product portfolio and sustainability. Speaking yesterday at the company’s Safety Standdown in Wichita, he and Kathryn Glynn, an engineering professional in the airframer’s product sustainability and strategy group, highlighted the role that SAF will play as the industry looks to fulfill its carbon reduction aspirations.

While SAF still represents less than 1% of the aviation fuel supply, demand particularly among the airlines is increasing along with supply. Yet among the top commercial users, NetJets ranks as the number four consumer of SAF.

In keeping with the safety theme of the event, Glynn described the certification and testing process that SAF must go through. “From a chemical perspective, SAF and jet-A are chemically equivalent, so they have the same carbon chains, have the same performance…and once its blended it is then recertified simply as jet-A.”

While SAF burns the same as fossil-based jet-A, its lifecycle carbon emissions reductions come from the circular nature of the feedstocks. Rather than extracting more carbon out of the ground in the form of petroleum, SAF feedstocks reuse carbon already in the atmosphere, in the form of biomass, waste oils and fats, or other renewable materials.

SAF is currently approved for use in blends up to 50%, but business aviation airframers—including Bombardier, Gulfstream, and Honda Aircraft—have successfully tested it in its pure, neat form in their unmodified aircraft.

Casia noted the higher cost for SAF over conventional jet fuel, which can add a third or more to the price. “If we put it in the perspective of the total operation cost or ownership costs of an aircraft, you can see that that percentage drops to down to about 7%, a little bit more understandable or reasonable when we look at it in that context,” he said, adding that dynamic should change in time. “We believe that with increased education, with increased awareness, the demand will increase, and prices should go down. New facilities will come online, the economies of scale will take effect, and prices will go down with that increased demand.”