India can be great producer of SAF & the fuel can help reduce pollution, says Airbus official

Toulouse (France): India has many attributes to become a great producer of Sustainable Aviation Fuel, which can help reduce pollution, as rice and wheat straws can also be used as a feedstock for SAF, according to a senior Airbus official.

India is one of the world’s fastest growing aviation markets and slowly, steps are being taken towards using SAF.

Aircraft maker Airbus has been pursuing initiatives for increasing the production and use of SAF, for which the demand is in Europe currently. It has also inked a partnership with the Indian Institute of Petroleum (IIP), Dehradun.

“India has a lot of attributes to become a great SAF producer. The first one is the availability of feedstock, there is a lot of biomass waste, used cooking oil (and) municipal solid waste that can be recovered,” Julien Manhes, Head of SAF and CDR (Carbon Dioxide Removal) Development Sustainability Organisation at Airbus, said.

During an interaction at Toulouse last week, he asserted that SAF can help in addressing various issues, including pollution.

“In India, for example, the rice straws or the wheat straws that are burnt every year that makes for very bad air quality in Delhi, these could be used as a feedstock for SAF,” he said.

Among other aspects that can push SAF production, Manhes said India also has a huge petrochemicals industry, a lot of refineries and engineering capabilities.

Airbus has partnered with the Indian Institute of Petroleum (IIP) and they are working on a new way of making SAF. “...we are helping IIP to get the new way of making SAF technically approved... it is a specific partnership in India,” he said.

He also said that by 2040 or 2050, India could be producing 100 million tonnes of SAF or slightly less.

In December 2024, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) estimated SAF production to touch 2.1 million tonnes (2.7 billion litres) in 2025 and the projection was 1 million tonnes (1.3 billion litres) for 2024.

IATA represents around 340 airlines, including Indian carriers, that account for more than 80 per cent of the global air traffic.

As SAF is much more expensive than crude oil now, Airbus’ Manhes said efforts should be made to ensure that SAF is competitive for which there should be mass scale.

“To reach mass scale, you need policies. The government has to either mandate SAF or support in production of SAF. That is why every country is doing regulatory engineering, finding the best regulatory mechanism that will help the local ecosystems grow.

“In India, there is a lot of work going on at the moment...,” he noted.