Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF)

Imagine a fuel that can be blended directly into a normal jet's fuel tank, requiring no engine modification, yet is produced from used cooking oil, agricultural waste or other renewable feedstocks instead of crude oil, cutting the net carbon emissions of that portion of every flight. Sustainable Aviation Fuel, SAF, is exactly this drop-in replacement, and India has now made blending it into jet fuel a legal requirement, not just an aspirational goal.

The mandate is genuinely phased and specific, government policy requires a 1% SAF blend in jet fuel by 2027, rising to 2% by 2028 and 5% by 2030, a trajectory that mirrors the ethanol blending mandate for petrol covered elsewhere on this site, the same regulatory logic, force a specific renewable blend percentage by a fixed date, applied to a completely different fuel and industry.

Even the 1% initial target requires genuinely significant volume, roughly 90,000 to 140,000 tonnes of SAF annually, meaning India needs functioning domestic SAF production capacity built well before 2027, not scrambling to import enough at the deadline, India's feedstock base could theoretically support 19 to 24 million tonnes of SAF production annually, far more than the 5% target actually requires, meaning feedstock isn't the constraint, building actual conversion capacity is.

This mandate connects directly to India's aviation turbine fuel story, covered under Oil & Gas elsewhere on this site, SAF doesn't replace ATF, it blends into it, meaning every refiner and fuel supplier serving Indian airports now has a genuine new production line to build out, and every airline flying into or out of India will progressively pay for at least a small SAF-blended premium on its fuel bill as the mandate percentage climbs toward 2030.