SkyNRG and ICF have cut their 2030 global SAF demand forecast to 12.8 million tonnes, down from 15.5 million tonnes in last year’s outlook, attributing the revision to softer near-term economics across producer geographies, with US 45Z transition uncertainty as the key drag. The downgrade puts mandated and voluntary demand at 3.6% of global jet fuel use in 2030, against the 4.5% the 2025 outlook expected.
For the first time in the outlook’s six-edition history, projected 2030 nameplate capacity (18.5 million tonnes) sits comfortably above projected demand (12.8 million tonnes). That gap is the new story. Producers have signed enough FIDs to over-supply the mandated market by 2030 in nominal terms, but the report flags that roughly a third of tracked SAF projects are now delayed by a year or more, and the emerging overcapacity is weakening the price signal those projects need to clear.
HEFA still accounts for around 85% of projected 2030 nameplate capacity, the headline number behind the report’s recurring “HEFA tipping point” framing. The constraint is not refinery capacity but feedstock. SkyNRG and ICF note that UCO imports into the EU and UK remain concentrated in three origins (China, Malaysia and Indonesia), which together supplied 57% of net imports in 2025. The waste-oil pool, in the report’s view, is not deep enough to carry SAF growth past 2030 even if every announced HEFA project gets built.
“Without diversification beyond HEFA, the sector risks trading one energy dependence for another.”
The cleanest single regulatory data point is the European eSAF sub-mandate. ReFuelEU’s 1.2% eSAF requirement starts in 2030. SkyNRG and ICF put combined EU and UK eSAF demand at roughly 0.6 million tonnes that year, reflecting ReFuelEU’s 1.2% trajectory and the UK SAF Mandate’s separate 0.5% PtL sub-target. Operational eSAF capacity by 2030 is forecast at just 0.2 million tonnes. The 0.4-million-tonne shortfall is the most cleanly quantified forward supply gap in any of the binding SAF sub-mandates and will be settled through ReFuelEU Article 12 administrative fines plus the rolled-forward physical obligation, not delivered as gallons. By 2035 EU eSAF demand climbs to 2.6 million tonnes, while the UK SAF Mandate caps HEFA at 71% of its 2030 obligation, roughly 0.9 million tonnes of a 1.2-million-tonne target, pushing UK producers earlier into ATJ and PtL than most project pipelines currently support.
Watch the alcohol-to-jet pipeline. Announced ATJ capacity for 2030 is down by about 1.3 million tonnes versus the 2025 outlook, the largest pathway-specific cut in the report. ATJ is the swing pathway between a HEFA-dominated 2020s and a mandate-compliant 2030s, and its FIDs are now the leading indicator for whether the 2031-2035 demand curve gets met by molecules or by fines.
Source: SkyNRG
