Will Sustainable Aviation Fuel Ever Take Off?

The jet fuel that could replace kerosene is made from used cooking oil. It costs two to six times more, and there isn't enough of it.

This week's guest is Lauren Riley, Chief Sustainability Officer at United Airlines, which buys more sustainable aviation fuel than any other airline in America and still only gets 0.7% of its fuel that way.

She calls that a pacing problem: we know how to make the fuel, the money and the policy just move too slowly. The harder limit is the cooking oil itself. The world is not going to fry more food to fill jet tanks, and the three other ways of making the fuel are years from scale.

The policy is not helping either. America cut its credit just as producers needed certainty, Europe mandated the fuel without doing anything to make more of it, and the banks Riley talks to want ten years of durability and are being offered two.

So the question in the title stays open. Riley expects the economics to arrive eventually. Jigar is putting his chips on hybrid planes instead.

In this episode:

• The four ways to make jet fuel without oil
  

• Why a refinery that could make this fuel today makes diesel instead
  

• What the banks told Lauren they need before they will finance a plant, and why nobody is offering it
  

• Europe's rule where you miss the blend, pay the fine, and still owe the fuel
  

• Oscar the Grouch, United's first Chief Trash Officer, has retired
  

• Jigar's case for skipping ahead to hybrid planes
  

Submit a question to Ask Jigar: https://octopusenergy.com/ask-jigar

S2G Investments: https://www.s2ginvestments.com/insights/report-illusion-of-crowds

Octopus Energy: https://octopusenergy.com/faas

Our merch store: https://energy-empire.bonfire.com/collection/all-products