Skift Take
Industry investment is an early step toward massive funding needed to develop sustainable aviation fuel — and funding is just one piece of the complicated puzzle that is adoption of that product. There’s a long way to go.
United Airlines earlier this year put together an investment of $100 million dedicated to startups working on renewable aviation fuels. Only five months later, that fund doubled to $200 million and had investments from three other other airlines.
That's because United Airlines and others are ready now to switch to renewable fuels, but there's a big problem: a huge shortfall in availability.
"I would love to have a robust marketplace right now for alternative fuels. We would buy it all up," said Lauren Riley, chief sustainability officer for United Airlines.
United uses 4 billion gallons of aviation fuel each year. There were less than 80 million gallons of renewable fuels produced worldwide in 2022, according to the International Air Transport Association.
Paired with other measures like hybrid electric engines, adopting what’s known as sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is expected to account for 65% of what needs to be done for the airline industry to meet its goal of reaching zero emissions by 2050, according to IATA. Achieving that would require producing 118.9 billion gallons of SAF by that timeframe.