The fuel with no biomass in it
e-SAF, also called power-to-liquid or PtL, is sustainable aviation fuel made from renewable electricity, water and captured carbon dioxide. There is no biomass anywhere in it: no cooking oil or tallow, and nothing grown for it. The carbon comes from captured CO₂, the hydrogen comes from water, and renewable electricity does the work of combining them into a fuel that meets the same technical standards as conventional jet fuel.
That makes it the clearest possible answer to a common mix-up. Most SAF today is a biofuel, but the two words are not interchangeable, and e-SAF is the proof: unambiguously sustainable aviation fuel, unambiguously not a biofuel.
Why it matters: the feedstock ceiling
Today’s SAF is mostly HEFA fuel, made from used cooking oil and tallow. Those are wastes, and wastes are finite: there is only so much cooking oil a planet fries. IATA puts 2025 production at 1.9 million tonnes, against roughly 500 million tonnes a year needed by 2050 for its member airlines’ net zero commitment. No waste stream closes a gap that size on its own.
e-SAF’s inputs are different in kind. Electricity, water and captured carbon are not capped by what kitchens and rendering plants throw away, which is why the European eSAF Coalition and the signatories of the Bodø Declaration argue it can scale beyond many biogenic routes.
Where it stands, honestly
Early. Electricity is the dominant cost, so e-SAF depends on cheap renewable power, and the first commercial-scale plants are still being financed and built. A tonne of e-SAF costs more today than a tonne of HEFA fuel, and both cost more than fossil jet fuel. Nobody serious in this market pretends otherwise.
The constraint is the same one the rest of the SAF market knows well. Producers need firm, long-term demand before a plant reaches a final investment decision, and buyers prefer to commit short. Somebody has to move first.
What we have signed
We have put our name on that early demand, and the record is public.
In April 2025 we signed the Bodø e-SAF Declaration, alongside e-SAF producers, manufacturers, airports, policymakers and NGOs. In the months after it, we signed Letters of Intent with two producers. One is with Carbon Neutral Fuels, for a portion of the future output of its planned UK Power-to-Liquid facility. The other is with Sora Fuel, covering the environmental attributes of the first 10 million gallons of its future e-SAF production.
A letter of intent is intent, not fuel. Both agreements are commitments to negotiate offtake, and we describe them that way deliberately. Their value is the demand signal: a named buyer on the other side of the table is part of what moves a plant towards financing.
What this changes for a buyer
Nothing about the accounting. When e-SAF volume flows, its verified environmental attributes move through the same Book and Claim machinery as every other batch: recorded on a registry, allocated to one owner and retired once. How a certificate works and what the registries do already cover the rules, and e-SAF changes none of them.