Vietnam staged the International Conference on Sustainable Aviation Fuel: Policy Frameworks and Market Development in Asia in Hanoi on 25 June 2026, co-convened by the Global Centre for Green Fuels (GCGF) and the Vietnam Academy of Construction Strategy and Cadres Training (ACST) under the Ministry of Construction, with supporting role from the Asia Pacific Sustainable Aviation Centre (APSAC). ICAO, Airbus, Boeing, LanzaTech, Taiyo Oil and SAFCo joined as industry participants alongside Vietnam Airlines.
The set-piece matters less for what was announced than for who convened it. Aviation policy in Vietnam has historically run through the Ministry of Transport, but the conference was hosted by the Ministry of Construction, which merged with the Ministry of Transport on 1 March 2025 under Resolution 176/2025/QH15 and Decree 33/2025/ND-CP. Vice Minister Le Anh Tuan’s framing, that SAF development should be pursued according to a roadmap tailored to Vietnam’s circumstances, is the first ministerial-level public signal that a domestic SAF policy file is open.
Vietnam currently has no binding SAF blending mandate or domestic production target. Vietnam Airlines flew the country’s first SAF-blended commercial service in May 2024 on an inbound Singapore-Hanoi rotation. Vietjet followed in October 2024 with its first SAF departures out of Tan Son Nhat to Melbourne and Seoul, supplied by Petrolimex Aviation. Neither carrier has announced a recurring offtake. On the production side, Dung Quat refinery (operated by Binh Son Refining and Petrochemical under PetroVietnam) received ISCC CORSIA and ISCC EU certification in March 2025 enabling SAF blending, storage and trading, although no production retrofit has been announced. Nghi Son has announced nothing on SAF.
“SAF development should be pursued according to a roadmap tailored to Vietnam’s circumstances.”
The regional context is what gives the Hanoi convening its urgency. Singapore’s mandatory SAF passenger levy, originally scheduled to apply to tickets sold from 1 April 2026 for departures from 1 October 2026, was deferred by CAAS to ticket sales from 1 October 2026 and flights from 1 January 2027, with a 1% SAF target rising to 3-5% by 2030. Malaysia’s National Energy Transition Roadmap and Aviation Decarbonisation Blueprint set a 1% SAF target from 2027 progressing to 47% by 2050. Indonesia’s Pertamina shipped its first commercial SAF batch from the Cilacap UCO co-processing line in 2025. Vietnam, by contrast, sits with a Dung Quat trading certificate, two one-off airline flights, and no binding domestic target. Each year Hanoi defers a mandate is a year Singapore Changi, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta widen their head-start in the ASEAN SAF value chain.
Watch the Ministry of Construction’s follow-through over the next six to twelve months. The cleanest single signal would be the publication of a draft SAF roadmap with a year-zero blending obligation and a feedstock strategy that names whether Vietnam intends to leverage its rice husk, used cooking oil and palm-stearin pools, or to position itself as an import-and-blend market the way Singapore has done. Without that, the Hanoi conference becomes a credentialing event for international participants rather than a turning point for Vietnamese aviation policy.
Source: PR Newswire
