Aviation is the hardest sector in the economy to decarbonise, and Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) is the only lever that can deliver that reduction using aircraft, airports and pipelines that already exist. The global industry expects SAF to deliver roughly 65 per cent of aviation’s path to net-zero by 2050. Every major aviation market ~ the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan and Singapore ~ has now converted that expectation into binding mandates and incentives that create a guaranteed, price-inelastic demand for SAF for the next quarter-century.

India has committed to indicative SAF blending of 1 (2027), 2 (2028) and 5 per cent (2030) initially on international flights, in step with ICAO’s CORSIA Phase II which becomes mandatory in 2027. This translates into a domestic requirement rising from about 62 kt in 2027 to ~380 kt by 2030 ~ a market for which India today has no commercial alcohol-to-jet supplier. The question is not whether India will consume SAF; it is whether India will make it or import it. India is uniquely positioned to make it. Having achieved E20 ethanol blending five years ahead of target, the country has built roughly 18 billion litres of ethanol capacity, a large share of which will become surplus as the ground-transport blending programme matures.

That surplus is a strategic asset with a shelf-life. The internationally-certified Alcohol-to-Jet (ATJ) pathway ~ approved under ASTM D7566 Annex A5 at up to a 50 per cent blend ~ converts exactly this ethanol into jet fuel. Its single enabling step is the conversion of ethanol into ethylene, and this is precisely the capability that this article identifies as India’s gap. It is a gap India can close today. The world’s airlines burn close to 350 million tonnes of jet fuel a year, and demand is growing fastest in the markets India serves.

Electrification and hydrogen will, at best, address short-haul flying decades from now; for the wide-body, long-haul fleet there is no alternative to a liquid, high-energy-density fuel. SAF is that fuel. It is a genuine drop-in ~ chemically equivalent to conventional jet fuel, usable in today’s engines and today’s airport infrastructure with no modification ~ and it cuts lifecycle CO2 by up to 80 per cent. Of the 11 SAF production pathways certified to date, the industry has concluded that the binding constraint on reaching net-zero is not feedstock but the speed of technology roll-out.

That is a race, and it rewards nations that move early. India has pledged net-zero by 2070, and its international carriers fall under ICAO’s Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA). CORSIA’s mandatory phase begins in 2027, and from that point the carbon intensity of fuel used on international routes carries a direct financial cost. SAF is the most practical instrument India’s airlines have to lower that intensity. The policy window and the compliance deadline now coincide ~ which is why this article treats SAF as a matter of the immediate present, not the distant future. SAF has crossed from demonstration to industry.

Global production is doubling year-on-year ~ from roughly one........

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