India Poised to Lead SAF Production, Offering Pollution Solutions: Airbus

Airbus claims that India's opportunity to become a leading producer of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) is growing, thanks to its plentiful feedstock and robust industrial strengths. As one of the rapidly expanding aviation markets globally, India is slowly embracing SAF to address pollution and decrease carbon emissions.

Julien Manhes, Head of SAF and CDR Development Sustainability Organisation at Airbus highlighted India's strengths in SAF production, pointing to biomass waste, used cooking oil, and municipal solid. “India has a lot of attributes to become a great SAF producer. The first one is the availability of feedstock, there is a lot of biomass waste, used cooking oil (and) municipal solid waste that can be recovered,” he stated.

A crucial development is India's ability to repurpose rice and wheat straws, which are typically burned and contribute to severe air pollution in Delhi. “In India, for example, the rice straws or the wheat straws that are burnt every year that makes for very bad air quality in Delhi, these could be used as a feedstock for SAF,” Manhes added.

Airbus has partnered with the Indian Institute of Petroleum (IIP), Dehradun, to develop new SAF production methods. “...we are helping IIP to get the new way of making SAF technically approved... it is a specific partnership in India,” he said.

By 2040 or 2050, India could produce nearly 100 million tonnes of SAF, with the right policy support and infrastructure investments.