Summary:
Of all the technologies aviation is counting on to reach net zero, electro-sustainable aviation fuel — eSAF, also called power-to-liquid or PtL — carries perhaps the heaviest burden. It is the only pathway capable of scaling to meet aviation’s long-haul decarbonisation needs without competing for the limited feedstocks that constrain biofuel supply. And under ReFuelEU, it has its own legally binding sub-mandate: 1.2% of jet fuel at EU airports must be synthetic eSAF by 2030, rising to 35% by 2050.
The problem: as of 2024, not a single litre of eSAF was commercially produced anywhere in the EU. No European facility has yet reached Final Investment Decision. The clock is ticking — and the FID window that experts say must open in 2025 or early 2026 is already closing.
This is not a story of technology failure. eSAF works. The process — splitting water with renewable electricity to produce green hydrogen, then combining it with captured CO₂ via Fischer-Tropsch synthesis — has been validated at pilot scale. The challenge is economic and structural: eSAF currently costs 10–13 times more than conventional jet fuel, and the capital required to build commercial-scale plants is enormous. Whether those plants get built on time is one of the most consequential questions facing the aviation industry today.
Key Takeaways
- Zero commercial eSAF in 2024: Not a kilogram of synthetic aviation fuel was supplied at any EU airport in 2024 — the first year of ReFuelEU compliance reporting.
- No EU facility has reached FID: Despite over 15 announced projects, none has cleared the Final Investment Decision threshold needed to begin construction.
- The FID window is closing: Transport Environment analysis says first FIDs must occur by early 2026 at the latest to have any chance of meeting the 2030 sub-mandate.
- 16 projects paused or cancelled: By early 2025, at least 16 large-scale European eSAF projects had stalled — halted by financing barriers, CO₂ feedstock uncertainty, and grid connection delays.
- Cost gap remains vast: eSAF costs roughly 13x conventional jet fuel and 3.5x bio-SAF. Production costs range from €7,500–€8,225/tonne depending on CO₂ source.
- US is moving faster: Project Roadrunner in Texas reached FID and broke ground in 2025 — targeting 23,000 tonnes/year of eSAF by 2027, a significant early milestone.
The numbers frame the challenge precisely. The ReFuelEU sub-mandate requires approximately 600,000 tonnes of eSAF annually at EU airports by 2030. EASA’s Realistic production scenario — which counts only projects that have passed FID — currently shows near-zero synthetic fuel output by that date. Only the Optimistic scenario, which includes announced-but-unbuilt facilities, reaches the 700,000-tonne mark that would nominally satisfy the sub-mandate.
The gap between Optimistic and Realistic is not a rounding error. It represents billions of euros in investment decisions that have not yet been made.
“With no clear path to cost parity with fossil fuels, the transition to e-SAF will not be driven by economics, but rather by political will — and a lack of scalable alternatives for decarbonising long-haul aviation.” — Project SkyPower
Why eSAF Is Different
To understand what makes eSAF so hard to scale, it helps to understand what makes it so important. Unlike HEFA — the hydrotreated vegetable and waste oil pathway that dominates current SAF production — eSAF doesn’t compete for agricultural land or waste feedstocks. It runs on electricity and CO₂. In theory, the inputs are unlimited: wherever there’s abundant renewable power and a source of carbon, eSAF can be made.
That’s also why eSAF is the designated long-run solution under ReFuelEU. Biofuels can get aviation to 6% by 2030. But the pathway to 70% by 2050 runs almost entirely through synthetic fuel. The biofuel runway ends well before the 2050 target; eSAF has to pick up the baton.
The FID Crisis
Project SkyPower — a coalition of 13 industry CEOs and over 40 member organisations convened to accelerate European eSAF deployment — has been explicit: the first large-scale eSAF plants in Europe need to reach FID by end of 2025, or the 2030 sub-mandate becomes unreachable. Their analysis estimates that between €15–25 billion in capital investment is required over the next five years, 90% of it in the EU market.
That deadline is now effectively past. And the pipeline picture is sobering. A Transport Environment analysis from 2025 found that at least 16 significant European eSAF projects had been paused or cancelled — cut down by the same trio of obstacles that has stalked the sector for years: inaccessible financing, uncertain CO₂ feedstock supply, and chronic delays in grid connections for the renewable electricity that powers electrolysers.
The projects that have progressed farthest share a common profile: they’re modular, close to industrial CO₂ sources, and located in countries with abundant cheap renewables. Germany’s ERA ONE facility (INERATEC) — Europe’s largest operating e-fuels plant at 2,500 tonnes per year — fits this description. So does Denmark’s Kassø plant, which validated commercial-scale power-to-liquid for e-methanol. These are proofs of concept, not solutions at the required scale.
The US Pulls Ahead
The most consequential eSAF milestone of 2025 may have happened not in Europe, but in West Texas. Infinium’s Project Roadrunner reached its final investment decision and broke ground during the year — targeting around 23,000 tonnes (7.6 million gallons) of eSAF annually by 2027. It’s a fraction of what the EU needs, but it’s the first large-scale eSAF facility to clear FID anywhere in the world.
The US advantage is partly economic — West Texas has cheap renewable electricity and available CO₂ from industrial sources — and partly policy-driven. The Inflation Reduction Act’s 45Z clean fuel production credit provided the subsidy floor that made Project Roadrunner financeable. The irony is not lost on European developers: a US tax credit is producing the global proof point that European mandates have so far failed to unlock.
What Has to Change
Project SkyPower’s analysis identifies five actions that must happen in parallel to unlock eSAF at scale: regulatory certainty on mandates and penalties; public funding commitments from existing aviation tax revenues; bankable 10+ year offtake contracts; low-interest financing from the European Investment Bank and national institutions; and better risk-sharing models for early projects.
On the pricing side, the Argus Media eSAF price indexes launched in late 2025 — the first standardised market benchmarks for synthetic aviation fuel — represent meaningful progress. Price discovery is a precondition for institutional investment. Without knowing what eSAF costs across regions, project financiers can’t model returns, and airlines can’t structure offtake contracts. The indexes won’t close the cost gap, but they make the gap visible and measurable.
The electrolyser supply chain is also maturing. ANDRITZ’s gigafactory in Erfurt (1GW annual capacity) and Topsoe’s SOEC facility in Herning (500MW/year) are both operational, building the hardware foundation that eSAF plants will need. The question is whether enough of that capacity finds its way into eSAF projects specifically, rather than other hydrogen applications competing for the same equipment.
2026: The Make-or-Break Year
The eSAF story in 2026 will be written in FIDs. Either the European project pipeline — now under intense pressure after a wave of cancellations — produces its first large-scale plant commitments, or the 2030 sub-mandate starts to look like a number the industry cannot hit.
The sub-mandate itself won’t disappear. ReFuelEU’s penalty structure creates legal obligations that don’t evaporate because production falls short. What that means in practice — whether regulators enforce, extend, or adjust the sub-target — will shape the entire eSAF investment calculus for the back half of the decade.
For an industry that has spent years writing roadmaps to 2050, 2030 is uncomfortably close. The eSAF bet is not just about technology. It’s about whether aviation’s most important long-term fuel can attract commercial capital at industrial scale — on a timeline set by law, not by market readiness.
Source: EASA | Project SkyPower