Under the ReFuelEU regulation, jet fuel suppliers face a dedicated sub-mandate requiring a growing share of synthetic aviation fuel (e-SAF), i.e. SAF produced from green hydrogen combined with captured CO2, starting in 2030.
Despite this obligation being known for years, most fuel suppliers have not developed their own e-SAF production capacity, nor made meaningful investments in, or offtake agreements with, third-party e-fuel producers.
As a result, e-SAF project developers are failing to materialize and the EU’s ability to meet its targets is becoming tighter as we speak, exposing fuel suppliers and the whole aviation industry to heavy financial penalties.
Instead of accelerating their investments to avoid the potential shortage of e-SAF and meet their obligations, the big oil and gas industry has come up with an accounting trick: they would like to be allowed to relabel part of their biofuel production as e-fuel, with the excuse that they (sometimes) use green hydrogen in the production process of these biofuels.
The consequences of this accounting trick would be genuinely harmful at many levels: (....)