Aviation commits to further decarbonising and increasing adoption of sustainable fuels

The aviation industry announced that – to build on its already impressive scope of activities for reducing CO2 emissions – they are establishing the Council on Sustainable Aviation Fuels Accountability (CoSAFA), which is intended to accelerate the industry’s movement toward further decarbonising aviation and increasing the adoption of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF).

The global aviation industry currently accounts for around 2% of man-made CO2 emissions. The aviation industry is committed to limit and reduce these emissions through the deployment of advanced technology, operational measures, infrastructure improvements and SAF. While most SAF transactions to date have involved a limited set of SAF producers and aircraft operators, there is increasing interest in multiple-party purchase and deployment agreements. CoSAFA represents a unified vision across the aviation industry for advancing consistent, accurate accounting practices documenting the production and use of SAF in such multi-party transactions – a crucial tool for further reducing the industry’s carbon footprint.

SAF provides a viable means of decarbonising the majority of aviation operations both now and for the foreseeable future. The formation of CoSAFA is a critical step toward the aviation industry further reducing its carbon footprint and achieving its sustainability goals. The movement toward a cleaner future is continuing to gain traction and make inroads – unifying every sector of the industry.

Timothy Obitts, CoSAFA Board Chair and President and CEO of the National Air Transportation Association

CoSAFA’s efforts will be led by a broad aviation industry Board of Directors, including representatives from Airlines for America (A4A), European Business Aviation Association (EBAA), General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA), International Air Transport Association (IATA), International Business Aviation Council (IBAC), National Air Transportation Association (NATA), and the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA).

All of these organisations recognise the scale-up of SAF production will be enabled by well-designed protocols for SAF chain of custody throughout the supply chain life cycle, allowing for product and transaction tracing, a means of verifying relevant data, and the appropriate accounting or claiming of environmental benefits.

CoSAFA’s mission is to work through an orderly, global approach toward providing the necessary transparency for multi-party SAF transactions. CoSAFA standards will ensure transactional transparency, preventing double-counting of emissions savings and other potential accounting questions that could undermine market confidence and investments in the environmental benefits of SAF production and use.

Recognising that many in the aviation sector are eager to incorporate SAF into their operations, the organising bodies of CoSAFA identified the need for a system to efficiently match SAF supplies with demand, track chain of custody and use with transparency, and ensure consistency with environmental and sustainability criteria. The standards of practice established by CoSAFA will be publicly available for voluntary use by any party within the aviation sector, including entities that supply fuel and related services to the aviation sector.

The industry has seen great success over the past several years in building awareness and uptake of SAF, wherever it is available. However, before significant SAF scale-up can occur, investors need confidence that producers and SAF purchasers will be able to reliably capture environmental premiums from lower carbon intensity fuels, and that SAF carbon intensity and other sustainability data can be consistently reported, auditable, and traceable.