India's goal to clean up transport with sustainable aviation fuel

Last month, a Virgin Atlantic flight running solely on sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), a non-polluting variant, completed its journey from London to New York, making it the first trans-Atlantic flight by a commercial airline to use a 100 per cent blend of jet fuel, although it must be mentioned that the flight had no paying passenger or cargo.

The aircraft was a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, using Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines. It carried around 60 tonnes of SAF and consumed three-fourths of it. Existing standards allow for a 50 per cent SAF blend in commercial jet engines, though this voyage demonstrated that in-production Rolls Royce engines for long-haul aircraft are compatible with 100 per cent.

Closer home, SpiceJet operated India’s first domestic biofuel test flight on a 25 per cent blend of SAF in 2018, followed by Indigo last year. In March this year, Vistara operated a wide-body aircraft on a long-haul international route using sustainable aviation fuel. A blend of 30 per cent SAF and 70 per cent conventional jet fuel was used on a ferry flight between Charleston International Airport, South Carolina, to Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi, which resulted in the reduction of approximately 150,000 pounds of carbon-dioxide emission over the fuel’s life cycle. Later, Vistara also operated a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, flying from Delhi to Mumbai, on a blend of 17 per cent SAF and 83 per cent conventional jet fuel, resulting in reduction of approximately 10,000 pounds of CO2 emission, says a Vistara spokesperson.

However, the government diluted plans for a blanket SAF blending mandate from 2025, ann­ounced by Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri ear­lier this year, and, instead, introduced a 1 per cent SAF blending target for international flig­hts starting in 2027. The SAF target rises to 2 per cent from 2028. The target was essential for Ind­ia to comply with the mandatory phase of the International Civil Aviation Organization’s Corsia, or Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation, which excludes emissions from ­domestic flights.

“The SAF opportunity is vali­dation of the long-term road map to intro­duce ‘biomass-based’ fuel variants in all segments of the economy,’’ says Suhas Baxi, chief executive officer (CEO), BiofuelCircle.

Around the world, more than 360,000 flights have already been powered by SAF.

India’s tryst with SAF

India’s SAF requirements for international aviation would total 100 metric tonnes per day at a 1 per cent blending ratio, and for domestic aviation, 300 metric tonnes per day, according to the government’s recently released Energy Transition Report. India consumed 7.4 million tonnes of jet fuel, which is derived from pro­cessing crude oil, in financial year 2022-23. Earlier this year, Puri talked of a 1 per cent SAF blending mandate from 2025, covering domes­tic and international flights, rising to 2 per cent by 2026 and 5 per cent by 2030.

Though the aviation industry contributes less than 1 per cent of India’s total emissions today, it is among the fastest growing sectors of a country on track to becoming the world’s third-largest aviation market by 2024. Curbing emissions from air transport is important for New Delhi to meet its 2070 net-zero goal. 

The Inter­nat­ional Energy Age­ncy said SAF will need to make up 10 per cent of the global jet mar­ket by 2030 to be in line with the agency’s net-zero pathway. Europe has imposed mandates to scale up usage of SAF across the European Un­ion, while the United States is offering incent­ives in the Inflation Reduction Act to promote SAF. China has not released a SAF policy yet.

The oil ministry attributed the calibra­tion of SAF commitments to feedback from stake­holders, the capacities of upcoming SAF plants, and projected jet fuel sales. Indian carriers point out that SAF is at least two to seven times the price of conventional jet fuel, making it harder to be profitable in India’s cut-throat airline market. Go First and Jet Airways have already been forced into bankruptcy, and Spice Jet is facing extreme financial pressures.
 

Globally, Boeing has set an ambit­ious target to address the long-term sustainability of com­m­ercial aviation by committing that its comme­rcial airplanes will be capable and certified to fly on 100 per cent SAF by 2030, says Salil Gupte, president, Boeing International Corporation India. “In India, we view SAF as an opportunity for growth.”

Cost factor

Fuel is 40 per cent of an Indian carrier’s operational cost, compared to 25 per cent for overseas carriers. Air France/KLM CEO Anne Rigail said at an International Air Traffic Association event in Spain in October that a tiny 1 per cent share of SAF in their aircraft cost $100 million last year and the 10 per cent SAF target by 2030 would add $1 billion to their fuel costs.

For instance, jet fuel for December sells at Rs 1,06,000/Kl. SAF, if available, can cost anywhere from Rs 2,00,000/Kl to Rs 7,00,000/Kl, according to oil ministry data. Carriers already pay high taxes on jet fuel: 25 per cent higher for fuel for domestic routes compared to international operations.

“Since fossil jet fuel is relatively cheaper, shifting to SAF will require the support of the government, industry, and consumers, parti­cularly as growth in the Indian aviation market accelerates,’’ according to India’s Energy Trans­ition Report, overseen by Tarun Kapoor, an advisor in the Prime Minister’s Office, and chairman, Energy Transition Advisory Committee.

India may have a huge potential for alcohol-to-jet SAF, given its huge sugar industry, with potential production capacity estimated at 24-30 billion litres a year. But lack of takers has put off investors in SAF facilities. India’s ethanol business surged only after state oil companies committed offtake at state-set rates, but that commitment will be harder to come from airlines, which are privately owned.

"As the country moves towards achieving the net-zero goals, the production of flex-fuels like second-generation ethanol (2G Ethanol) and SAF becomes increasingly important, especially SAF, which emits up to 80% less greenhouse gases compared to traditional jet fuels,'' said Tarun Sawhney, vice chairman & managing director, Triveni Engineering and Industries, one of the country's largest sugar and ethanol producers. “Blending just 1% SAF empowers over 5 lakh farmers, and boosts the rural economy.''

The alcohol-to-jet (ATJ) fuel process to make synthetic kerosene is best suited to India's domestic feedstock profile because of the existing facilities, said US trade publication Jet Fuel Intelligence. Though the HEFA method, which yields synthesised paraffinic kerosene from hydro-processed esters and fatty acids, used in the Virgin flight, to make SAF may be cheaper than ATJ, limited access to used cooking oil feedstock in India poses a problem.
 

“Critical end-use applications such as aviation will demand a more stringent quality management process for the fledgling biofuels industry and the feedstock supply chain will have to quickly come around to meet these expectations,” says Baxi of BiofuelCircle.

IndianOil is working with US ATJ specialist LanzaJet to build a joint-venture plant converting ethanol made from refinery off-gases into SAF at its Panipat refinery in northern India. That 37.9 million litre-a-year facility could be up and running by 2025. But that is still a fraction of the more than 9 billion litres of jet fuel India consumes annually.

“Flight100 proves that SAF can be used as a safe drop-in replacement for fossil-derived jet fuel, but there is simply not enough SAF and, in order to reach production at scale, we need to see significantly more investment,’’ said Virgin Atlantic CEO Shai Weiss. “But that investment will come “only when regulatory certainty and price-support mechanisms, backed by the government, are in place”.