The Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bottleneck Isn't Just Fuel
- 4 hours ago
- 2 min read
Delta Air Lines and Shell Aviation signed a five-year contract in mid-July running through 2030, expanding sustainable aviation fuel supply across five hub airports spanning the country, from LAX to Boston Logan. Notably, the announcement never leads with a gallons figure, the number most SAF deals are built around.
That's because most SAF deals are offtake agreements: an airline agrees to buy fuel a producer promises to make, often years before the plant exists. United Airlines learned that math in 2023, signing on for up to a billion gallons over 20 years from Cemvita, tied to what the company calls its "first full-scale SAF plant." As of this past June, that plant is still a pilot: Cemvita's biggest production run to date was a 75,000-liter demonstration batch in Belgium. American Airlines made a similar bet in 2022, committing to 500 million gallons over five years from Gevo, contingent on Gevo still building the plant. Gevo broke ground months later on Net-Zero 1, its first commercial-scale SAF facility in South Dakota, targeting the first deliveries by 2025. This month, Gevo scrapped that project entirely and took a $176 million impairment, redirecting its SAF ambitions to a different facility in North Dakota now targeted for 2028.
The Delta-Shell deal is built differently. It centers on expanding SAF access and delivery infrastructure at the airport level, which is storage and distribution plumbing that gets fuel from a refinery into an airplane, rather than simply locking in a purchase order. Without it, SAF stays a rounding error in global jet fuel use no matter how many offtake deals get announced.
Amelia DeLuca, Delta's Chief Sustainability Officer, said the deal proves scaling SAF isn't theoretical, it's achievable, and is meant to create a model which other airlines can build on rather than stand as a one-off. Reema Bari, Shell's Head of Aviation Americas, said pairing conventional jet fuel with SAF and longer-term innovation will strengthen energy security and contribute to the transformation of aviation.
That framing matters because Delta's own numbers are sobering. Roughly 90% of the airline's carbon footprint comes from jet fuel, and its target of 10% SAF use by 2030 remains in place even as production technology across the industry keeps scaling slower than hoped. Shell has sourced Delta's fuel before from producers like Montana Renewables, which draws on used cooking oil and animal fat alongside crop-based oils.
The lesson for any company chasing GHG reduction through a supplier's fuel switch: the constraint usually isn't willingness to pay, and it isn't a shortage of airlines willing to sign purchase orders. It's whether anyone has built the pipes.
TX Energy Buyers: Easily Compare 100+ energy providers to get your best rate:
Follow ORGEL across multiple platforms:
