Every buyer arrives at this question, usually about four minutes in. If the fuel is sustainable, what is it made of, and is something else going without so a plane can fly?
It is a fair question, and the honest answer has two halves.
What is sustainable aviation fuel made from?
Most of the fuel reaching the market today starts as something that already exists for another reason. Used cooking oil, collected from restaurants and food manufacturing. Tallow, a by-product of meat processing. Corn oil recovered during ethanol production, which the industry calls Technical Corn Oil or Distillers Corn Oil.
None of those were grown to make fuel. They are the residue of a process that was going to happen anyway. For most of them the alternative destination is a lower-value use, or landfill.
Then there is the second half. Some sustainable fuel does come from crops grown for the purpose, including camelina, canola and soy. That is a real part of the market and pretending otherwise would not survive a serious conversation.
Does it take food off the table?
Sometimes the question is really about land. A residue does not compete for a field, because the field was already in use. A purpose-grown crop can compete, and whether it does depends on where it was grown, what it displaced, and how the land was managed.
This is precisely why the eligibility rules exist, and why they are not written by the people selling the fuel. The trade-offs between feedstocks, and where the next ones come from, are the subject of Out of the Fryer, the report we published with PA Consulting.
Who decides what counts as eligible?
A certification scheme does. Fuel enters the system only when a recognised scheme has assessed the feedstock, the production pathway and the chain of custody behind it. Future Energy Global is certified by both RSB and ISCC, and audited externally by SCS Global Services.
That matters more than any adjective a marketer can attach. “Sustainable” is a conclusion a scheme reaches once it has seen the evidence. A supplier does not get to award it to itself.
What we supply
Most of what we supply is used cooking oil or tallow. We can source technical corn oil as well, and the transaction below is one of those. It is the example we show because every step of it is documented, from the field to the retirement statement.
What it looks like in a real transaction
In May 2026 we settled a transaction with Delta Air Lines. It was built on Technical Corn Oil, a by-product of corn grown by farming communities across Minnesota. Montana Renewables refined it into sustainable aviation fuel and the fuel was uplifted locally. Delta claimed the Scope 1 reduction against flights from its Minneapolis hub. We claimed the Scope 3 reduction against our own employees’ travel.
One batch of fuel. Two distinct reductions, each verified and counted only once.
Why this changes what you can claim
A certificate is only as good as the evidence behind the molecule. If nobody can say where the feedstock came from, the claim rests on trust rather than record. Trust is the thing that fails under audit.
We can follow the fuel back to its source, whether that source is a fryer, a rendering plant or a field. When someone asks where your reduction came from, the answer should be a document, not an assurance.