Europe Establishes Its First ReFuelEU SAF Baseline
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency published the first ReFuelEU Aviation Annual Technical Report on October 22, 2025, providing the first detailed baseline of sustainable aviation fuel supply across the European Union.
Reporting aviation fuel suppliers accounted for 32.1 million tonnes of aviation fuel during 2024.
Of that amount, approximately 192.7 thousand tonnes was sustainable aviation fuel, representing just 0.6 percent of reported aviation fuel supply.
Twenty-five suppliers provided SAF to 33 airports across 12 EU Member States, although the market remained highly concentrated.
Five Member States accounted for approximately 99 percent of the SAF supplied.
The figures provide a baseline against which Europe’s mandatory SAF requirements can now be measured.
Used Cooking Oil Dominates the Current Fuel Mix
The report also reveals how concentrated Europe’s SAF feedstock base remains.
Approximately 81.1 percent of the SAF supplied in 2024 was produced from used cooking oil.
Waste animal fats represented another significant share, while advanced aviation biofuels remained a very small part of total supply.
Feedstock sourcing was also heavily international.
Around 69 percent of the renewable feedstock used for SAF originated outside the European Union, with China accounting for approximately 38 percent and Malaysia 12 percent.
Despite this concentration, EASA calculated a weighted average lifecycle greenhouse-gas reduction of approximately 91 percent for the SAF reported.
In total, the fuel supplied was associated with around 714 thousand tonnes of CO₂-equivalent lifecycle emissions savings compared with conventional aviation fuel.
The 2030 Challenge Is Moving Toward Synthetic Fuels
The ReFuelEU Aviation framework requires SAF to represent 2 percent of aviation fuel supplied at covered EU airports from 2025, increasing to 6 percent in 2030 and progressively reaching 70 percent by 2050.
EASA’s production assessment indicates that Europe could have sufficient overall SAF production capacity to meet the 2030 target if a significant share of announced projects reaches operation.
Its realistic scenario estimates approximately 3.6 million tonnes of EU SAF production capacity by 2030, while an optimistic scenario reaches around 5.2 million tonnes of bio-based SAF plus 0.7 million tonnes of synthetic aviation fuel.
Synthetic fuels remain the more difficult part of the transition.
At the time of the assessment, EASA reported that no identified EU synthetic aviation fuel facility had yet reached Final Investment Decision.
That creates an important distinction between the overall SAF mandate and the dedicated synthetic fuel requirements that begin from 2030.
The first ReFuelEU data therefore show a market that has started to develop but remains concentrated around a single mature pathway and a relatively narrow feedstock base.
Future compliance will depend increasingly on diversification — geographically, technologically and across feedstock sources — as the mandated SAF share increases.
Sources
European Union Aviation Safety Agency — ReFuelEU Aviation Annual Technical Report 2025: 2024 in Review, October 22, 2025
European Commission — ReFuelEU Aviation