220,000t / yr
CO₂ emissions avoided at full operation
// For the climate
Aviation is one of the hardest sectors to decarbonise, and switching to synthetic fuel is the only feasible route that scales without biomass limits. Europe has mandated it from 2030, and supply is still far behind. The Iceland eSAF Project will be one of the first facilities built to change that.
// Climate impact
The direct climate impact of the Iceland eSAF Project is significant. At full operation, the facility will prevent approximately 220,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year, about midway between the annual emissions of the Rio Tinto ISAL aluminium smelter and Elkem’s ferrosilicon plant at Grundartangi. In everyday terms, that is roughly the same as taking about 100,000 cars off the road each year, based on an average Icelandic passenger car emitting about 2.2 tonnes of CO₂ a year. It will also produce about 1,300 tonnes of green diesel per annum as a co-product, displacing fossil fuel in ground transport.
But the indirect impact may matter just as much. A 300 MW facility will produce hydrogen at a scale that can make smaller transition projects viable: fuelling H₂ trucks, buses or even a hydrogen train to Reykjavík, or providing feedstock to neighbouring industrial users. These are projects that cannot justify a standalone electrolyser at their scale. The facility will remove the chicken from the chicken-and-egg problem that can stall small hydrogen projects in the area.
And the capability built here, in electrolysis, fuel synthesis, carbon capture integration, and renewable energy management at industrial scale, does not stay inside the fence. It builds the workforce, the supply chains, and the institutional knowledge that Iceland needs to finish the last chapter of its energy transition: replacing the oil that renewables alone cannot reach.
European departing-flight CO₂ to 2050, Mt per year: without action emissions rise to 271 Mt; with SAF, fleet and operational improvements they fall to 101 Mt
SourceEUROCONTROL, Aviation Long-Term Outlook 2024–2050 (December 2024), base scenario, ECAC departing flights.
// Carbon cycle
eSAF is made by combining captured CO₂ with renewable hydrogen, so the carbon in the fuel was already in circulation rather than newly pulled from the ground. It therefore does not offset emissions somewhere else, and it does not promise removals later. It prevents new fossil carbon from leaving the ground in the first place. The approximately 90% lifecycle saving reflects the small energy and process emissions still involved in producing the fuel. In Iceland, where the electricity powering production is nearly carbon-free, those residual emissions are especially low.
Lifecycle greenhouse gas intensity under the RED framework, gCO₂e/MJ
Iceland eSAF is approximately 90% lower than fossil jet fuel, well below the RED III limit for RFNBOs.
SourceDelegated Regulation (EU) 2023/1185; Iceland eSAF is an IðunnH2 project estimate.
Source Lifecycle frame: fossil comparator 94.1 gCO₂e/MJ and RFNBO threshold 28.2 gCO₂e/MJ per DR (EU) 2023/1185. Iceland eSAF: project estimate to be confirmed at FEED and verified annually.
// Reduction logic
Hydrogen production is the largest energy input. Electricity from fully renewable sources (hydro, wind, solar, geothermal) yields the lowest carbon intensity. Grids with high fossil shares produce hydrogen with higher embedded emissions, reducing the lifecycle benefit.
Biogenic CO₂ and CO₂ captured directly from the atmosphere are counted as carbon-neutral at combustion. CO₂ captured from fossil industrial sources carries a higher lifecycle penalty.
How heat is recovered, how unreacted gases are recycled, and how the synthesis chain is optimised all affect the energy used per tonne of fuel produced.
// Iceland’s grid
Iceland’s electricity system is approximately 99% renewable, geothermal and hydroelectric. It is one of the lowest-carbon grids in the world. That is partly the result of geology: Iceland sits on a mid-ocean ridge, with abundant geothermal resource and glacial hydrology. But it is also the result of generations of political will. The decisions to drill deep geothermal in the 1970s and to build out hydropower at the scale Iceland did were not accidents of geography. They were made by people who chose long capital cost and long-horizon risk so that later generations could reap the benefits. The renewable grid that makes Icelandic eSAF possible is a deliberate inheritance, not a found object. Wind is the next chapter: the project is set to enable new wind development, on the order of 100 turbines across two to three sites, adding low-cost, environmentally friendly capacity alongside Iceland’s geothermal and hydro base.
Source Iceland grid composition: Orkustofnun. Approximately 70% hydro, 30% geothermal.
// Caveats
Source Non-CO₂ warming effects: Lee et al. 2021. Energy density comparison (batteries vs jet fuel): widely reported, approximately 0.25 MJ/kg vs 43 MJ/kg.
// Capacity
Every step of the eSAF chain, electrolysis, methanol synthesis and fuel synthesis, runs commercially today. The constraint is not the technology. It is built plants: first-of-a-kind facilities that turn a proven chain into an operating one.
That is where a single project carries climate weight beyond its own tonnes. Each facility that reaches operation proves the costs, the financing model and the system integration for every plant that follows, so building one helps make the next ten investable. For an aviation-dependent country like Iceland, a secure domestic supply of sustainable aviation fuel depends on exactly this: capacity that is built, not only mandated.
// Over 20 years
// CO₂ sourcing
Our facility's primary feedstock is captured CO₂, and we intend to gather as much of it as possible from our neighbours in the Green Industrial Park, turning what would otherwise be an atmospheric liability into the raw material for sustainable aviation fuel. If you produce biological waste or CO₂ streams in the area, we would like to hear from you.
Talk to us about CO₂ supply →