The global demand for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is rapidly driving up feedstock prices. In China, the price of waste cooking oil, often called “gutter oil”, has risen around fourfold in two years, said Feng Yu, president of aerospace conglomerate Honeywell China.
Speaking at a roundtable in Beijing, Feng pointed to the “severe shortage” for this resource worldwide, reported Caixin. Waste oil is a key feedstock for hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids (HEFA), a hydrogenation and refining process that is currently the most commercially mature method of producing SAF.
China’s gutter oil problem first came to prominence in 1998, when Southern Metropolis Daily published a series of reports on the illegal processing of waste grease from sewers and restaurant drains back into cooking oil. In 2010, reportedly in response to media investigations, regulators issued an emergency notice to block gutter oil from entering the catering sector, noted China News. Subsequently, in 2014, a demonstration facility producing SAF from waste cooking oil was launched by Boeing and the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China.
In recent years, SAF has gained strong momentum as a near-term option to reduce aviation emissions, being able to reduce lifecycle emissions by up to 80%. Cost, however, is a problem. SAF trades at two to five times the price of fossil jet fuel in several markets, and according to the International Air Transport Association’s estimates, this price gap could add USD 3.6 billion to airline cost burdens in 2025, noted S&P Global.
Even so, production capacity is growing. Chinese companies that have or are in the process of obtaining airworthiness certification for their SAF have over one million tonnes of production capacity per year, Caixin reported. Additionally, a new facility was inaugurated earlier this month by Honeywell and Jia’ao Environmental Protection that uses proprietary technology to turn about 500,000 tonnes of waste oil into SAF annually, the outlet noted.
Global policies, such as that of the EU, have been a major driver of the SAF push. The bloc has set targets requiring 2% SAF use by 2025 and 70% by 2050. China has no mandatory blending rule, but plans to have consumed 50,000 tonnes of SAF between 2021 and 2025.
Critics remain unconvinced. The co-author of a 2024 report by the Washington-based Institute of Policy Studies called SAF a “huge greenwashing exercise” by the aviation industry, arguing it cannot scale fast enough to replace fossil jet fuel, noted The Guardian. Heavy reliance on bio-based feedstocks could also bring serious risks, including pressure on food supply, damage to natural carbon sinks, and higher pollution from land-use change, the outlet reported.
Read Dialogue Earth’s previous article on sustainable aviation fuels and its need for policy support in China.