Conservation Risks of Sustainable Aviation Fuel

Informing Responsible SAF Growth

Aviation bioenergy, or sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), can be derived from a variety of feedstocks, making it an attractive solution, particularly for industries (e.g. logging, agriculture) that produce otherwise unusable biowastes. Local and global SAF policies are both creating new market opportunities and putting pressure on existing markets for biomass feedstocks.

This project will focus on informing the design of policy and corporate safeguards to both enable rapid SAF scale-up to decarbonize aviation while preventing unintended impacts like indirect land use change, loss of cultural resources, conversion pressure, price spillovers and unsustainable agricultural intensification.

Using Minnesota as a case study, the researchers will explore methods that can assess which safeguards are both environmentally effective and administratively feasible, and determine how to translate these safeguard mechanisms into clear, auditable rules for public policy and corporate offtake agreements in regional SAF initiatives.

Project Goals

• Create a primer intended for policy staff at The Nature Conservancy to understand the scope of potential environmental impacts from SAF feedstocks
• Publish a manuscript summarizing literature reviews, presenting the results from model and scenario analysis, and discussing the scientific implications for corporate and legislative policy
• Develop policy briefs for Minnesota state legislators outlining potential positive and negative impacts of SAF feedstock expansion for their districts
• Create a two-page impact brief that outlines potential impact of alternative policies as they relate to financial mechanisms and strategies for investing in SAF infrastructure