Costs are the main obstacle to increasing the use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), Exxon Mobil Senior Vice President Jack Willams said Friday.
SAF accounts for just 0.2% of the jet fuel market but policymakers including President Joe Biden see its adoption as a way to meet goals on lowering carbon emissions. But SAF, a biofuel made from plant or animal materials including used cooking oil or agricultural waste, is up to five times more expensive than regular fuel.
“There’s one big negative and that’s cost,” Williams said at a conference near Chicago. “As we think about how we want to grow SAF…we have got to focus on how do we minimize costs?”
Williams said demand for SAF could increase from 7 million barrels a day now to 12 million barrels a day in 2050 and described the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act as the catalyzing action for biofuel production as well as carbon capture/storage and low carbon hydrogen.
