// Product
Electro-Sustainable Aviation Fuel (eSAF) is a synthetic kerosene made from renewable electricity, water, and captured CO₂. Chemically equivalent to fossil jet fuel, usable in today's aircraft, engines, and airport infrastructure without modification, with lifecycle emissions roughly 70 to 95% lower depending on the electricity and CO₂ source.
// eSAF defined
Aviation cannot reach net zero on fuel efficiency improvements alone. Current physical and safety limitations to the direct use of batteries and hydrogen in aviation mean that the best way to decarbonise flight is to change the fuel. That is the role of sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF.
Every approved SAF is safe and certified to the same standard as fossil kerosene. They differ in how sustainable they are and how far they can scale. Crop- and waste-based fuels cut emissions but hit the limits of land and waste. eSAF, the electrofuel route, cuts the most and is the only one that scales with the grid.
Its technology is proven, every step run at industrial scale for years. What is unproven is combining them at the volume now demanded. Mandates from governments and airlines are turning eSAF into a market with demand written into law.
Producing it is energy intensive, and power is the largest cost, which is why projects are being developed where renewable electricity is low-cost and available.
// SAF families
SAF is a category, not a single product. It covers a family of fuels that can be blended with conventional jet fuel and used on today’s aircraft, but produced through very different processes from very different feedstocks. These families differ sharply in their emissions reduction potential, their feedstock constraints, and their long-term scalability.
eSAF stands out on two dimensions: it delivers the deepest emissions reduction of any SAF family, and it scales with renewable energy rather than with biological feedstocks.
// Technology
Several proven industrial processes are combined into one production chain: renewable electricity splits purified water into hydrogen, CO₂ is captured and purified, and the two are synthesised into kerosene-range hydrocarbons that meet the ASTM D7566 jet-fuel specification. Current certification permits blends of up to 50% with conventional jet fuel. The carbon source and the electricity source determine how low the fuel’s lifecycle emissions go.
// Renewable inputs, synthesised into fuel
// Market
Aviation will need eSAF to decarbonise, and that makes it a product the market genuinely wants. With the first commercial-scale projects coming online in the coming years, eSAF is being developed as much for fuel security as for climate, across both Europe and North America. Binding mandates put a floor under that demand, requiring a rising share of aviation fuel to be synthetic, but the deeper driver is simpler: it is the one route that lets airlines keep flying as the world cuts carbon.
// Cost
eSAF is energy intensive to produce, and power is its single largest cost. That is why projects are developed where renewable electricity is low-cost, renewable and available. Unlike fossil fuels, whose price swings with global oil markets, eSAF’s costs are front-loaded into building the plant and then stable for decades, because the input is electricity the developer can contract for the long term. Cost is the central challenge facing the industry, and it falls as renewable power and electrolysis scale.
// Rationale
Suðurnes is built for this fuel. Keflavík is a major international gateway, and under the mandates its airlines will need sustainable aviation fuel for decades. Iceland, with a renewable grid and little biomass, is suited to make the synthetic kind rather than the crop or waste kind, and producing it beside the runway turns a compliance cost into a local advantage: SAF on hand, and an airport that stays competitive as the rules tighten.
The region lives on people arriving by air, so keeping those journeys low-carbon protects the tourism the peninsula depends on. The fit is physical too. Kadeco’s Green Industrial Park in Suðurnesjabær already has the harbour, land, and industrial services an eSAF plant needs, with neighbours close enough to share power, carbon, heat, and waste streams. And because the methanol-to-jet route passes through methanol on its way to kerosene, e-methanol stays open as a second market and a fallback, the harbour right beside the plant to move it.
// Technology
From renewable electricity, water, and CO₂ to jet fuel, and where the technology stands today.
// eSAF Cost
Why eSAF costs more than fossil jet fuel today, and why the gap is closing.
// eSAF Market
Who needs eSAF, how much, and the law that drives demand to 2050.
// eSAF vs the Alternatives
eSAF, biofuel, hydrogen, batteries: why the electrofuel route is the one that scales.
