India has potential to be sustainable aviation fuel producer: IATA official

India has the potential to be a key producer of sustainable aviation fuel by utilising its ethanol supplies and availability of lipids feedstocks like non-edible industrial oils, according to a senior official at the global airlines' grouping IATA.

With decarbonisation in focus, efforts are being made to reduce emissions and over the years, Indian carriers have operated some flights with a blend of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) and traditional Aviation Turbine Fuel (ATF).

Hemant Mistry, Director of Net Zero Transition at the International Air Transport Association (IATA), said the ecosystem for SAF has developed but there is more work to be done.

"There are some very good opportunities for India right now. One is in terms of SAF feedstocks like agricultural waste... there is a growing understanding on what to do for SAF production. We are talking to a number of companies to understand how we can collaborate... oil companies," Mistry told PTI in a recent interview in Geneva.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) represents around 340 airlines, including Indian carriers, that account for more than 80 per cent of the global air traffic.

"India, the third largest ethanol producer and consumer today, has the potential to emerge as a key SAF producer utilising its existing and advanced ethanol supplies.

"At IATA, we see sustainable, low-carbon-intensity ethanol as a promising feedstock to propel India's aviation sector growth," Mistry said.

This year, global SAF production is estimated at 1 million tonnes (1.3 billion litres), lower than the earlier projection of 1.5 million tonnes (1.9 billion litres) but higher than the volume of 0.5 million tonnes (600 million litres) recorded in 2023, according to IATA.

As the aviation sector pursues ambitious efforts for decarbonisation, IATA has said SAF production growth is disappointingly slow.

While noting that India is poised to emerge as the world's third largest aviation market, Mistry said there is also the opportunity for the country to emerge as a SAF hub in the region.

"The position can be further strengthened by the early adoption of innovative global accounting practices where India's SAF supplies can cater to the global aviation market, a true mark of act local, think global," he noted.

India is one of the world' fastest growing civil aviation markets and airlines are expanding their fleets as well as networks to cater to the rising traffic demand.

On mandating use of SAF, Mistry pointed out that the mandate is a work for scale but that can only come later. "You can't have a mandate without technology maturity. That is a big risk."  In 2025, IATA expects SAF production to touch 2.1 million tonnes (2.7 billion litres).

India has the availability of lipids feedstocks like non-edible industrial oils, animal fats and tallows where the supply chains are not well developed with limited supply for biodiesel production, Mistry said.

The country's surplus annual biomass availability is estimated to be more than 200 Mt.

With multiple options available for road fleets, lipids-based feedstock must be used for India's SAF value chains. These oily feedstocks can be utilised at existing refineries by ASTM-qualified HEFA co-processing pathways, Mistry said.

Consultancy Deloitte, in a report in October this year, said India has the potential to produce 8-10 million tonnes of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) by 2040, and investments worth USD 70-85 billion will be required to achieve the projected production.

On the priorities under the SAF umbrella, Mistry said it is a question about more support to get the technologies to maturity and enable some sort of market development.

"We should not have feedstock criteria that are regionally divergent. We should have sustainability criteria that are universally acknowledged," he added.

There are 11 certified pathways to make SAF and HEFA method (Hydrotreated Esters Fatty Acids) is projected to account for around 80 per cent of the production in the next five years.

HEFA method utilises used cooking oil and animal fats, among others.

As per the airlines' grouping, SAF volumes could be boosted by increasing investments to scale up production through the other certified pathways, in particular Alcohol-to-Jet (AtJ) and Fischer-Tropsch (FT), which use biological and agricultural wastes and residue.

"The airline industry's decarbonisation must be seen as part of the global energy transition, not compartmentalised as a transport issue... renewable fuel refineries will produce a broad range of fuels used by other industries, and only a minor share will be SAF, used by airlines," IATA Senior Vice President Sustainability and Chief Economist Marie Owens Thomsen said last week.