An interagency team led by the US Department of Energy (DOE), US Department of Agriculture (USDA), and US Department of Transportation’s (DOT’s) Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has released the Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) Grand Challenge: Metrics Dashboard Fact Sheet.

The Metrics Dashboard Fact Sheet summarizes actions and progress to help drive innovation and expand the production and use of SAF to meet the SAF Grand Challenge target of 3 billion gallons of SAF in the United States by 2030. The new Metrics Dashboard Fact Sheet includes key accomplishments from federal agencies:

• Domestic SAF use has grown 10x. Since the SAF Grand Challenge was announced in 2021, annual SAF production and imports have grown from 5 million gallons to 52 million gallons through the first six months of 2024.

• We have a pathway to meet the ambitious 2030 SAF Grand Challenge target. Based on active projects, between 2.6 and 4.9 billion gallons per year of SAF may be produced domestically by 2030, creating a clear pathway to achieve the SAF Grand Challenge near-term goal.

• US SAF production is cutting emissions. More than 300,000 metric tons of CO2 have been reduced through June 2024 with US SAF production.

Supporting the SAF Grand Challenge, the DOE’s Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) also announced $12 million in funding to support the advancement of integrated biorefinery technologies to decarbonize the transportation and industrial sector. This funding opportunity announcement (FOA), FY24 Scale-Up of Integrated Biorefineries, will help reduce technology uncertainty and demonstrate bioenergy technologies that produce low carbon intensity biofuels and biochemicals, particularly SAFs, using biomass and waste resources.

The FOA aims to accelerate cost-shared RD&D projects with partners in industry, academia, and DOE national laboratories. Selected projects will be focused on the design, construction, testing, and verification of new technology and feedstock pathways for engineering scale integrated biorefineries. By reducing cost and technical risk, BETO can help pave the way for industry to deploy commercial-scale integrated biorefineries and reduce GHG emissions from these hard-to-decarbonize sectors.

The SAF Grand Challenge, launched in 2021, is a US government strategy, led by the DOE, DOT, and USDA, aimed at scaling up domestic SAF production to 3 billion gallons per year by 2030 and 35 billion gallons per year by 2050 to reduce aviation’s CO₂ emissions. It builds on sector-wide industry commitments to foster innovation and drive change across the entire US aviation emissions and ecosystem.

In September 2022, federal agencies published the SAF Grand Challenge Roadmap, outlining a whole-of-government approach with coordinated policies and specific activities that should be undertaken by the government to support achievement of the SAF Grand Challenge goals.