An investigation of the feasibility of feedstock to support the UK’s sustainable aviation fuel goals

The UK’s aviation sector currently accounts for about 8% of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions. In order to meet the country’s ambitious Net-Zero goals, significant change in the industry will be necessary over the coming decade. While a variety of technologies have been proposed with this goal in mind, due to the slow-moving nature of the industry, the most feasible of these is the increased use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) that requires little to no change to existing aircraft systems, procedures, as well as ground facilities. This fact is further supported by the passing of the UK’s 2030 SAF mandate. SAF is a biofuel produced from 100% renewable waste or residue materials, called feedstock. Therefore, due to the many options available as potential sources for SAF, it is important to look at the feasibility, both economic and environmental, of these various sources and their various blends. This paper analyses a number of these potential SAF sources by exploring the current state of the SAF industry as well as the current availability of feedstock. Next, a detailed analysis into the environmental and economic aspects of each fuel blend is done. These findings are fed into a novel weighting algorithm that is designed to assess a number of factors, including various technical characteristics and feasibility studies, as well as produce a detailed outlook of the future potential of each fuel blend. This work would support the industry in making decisions related to their SAF fuel blend options.