Affordable aviation e-fuels are on the horizon

By Pedro Piris-Cabezas and Glenda Chen

The adoption of electricity-based synthetic fuels, also known as e-fuels, will be essential for any hard-to-decarbonize sector with a stake in a resilient liquid fuels market. Chief among them is aviation.

E-fuels offer promising new routes nearing commercialization. However, a primary barrier to adoption has been the current cost ratio between e-fuels and conventional fossil fuels. There is also much competition across sectors — transport or otherwise — for the limited clean power generated. At the same time, transitioning the entire power sector over to intermittent renewable sources means that matching regional supply and demand in real time is an ever-evolving, rapidly expanding task.

A new study by EDF, Intermittent Production of Electricity-based Synthetic Jet Fuel as a Demand-side Management Strategy for Grid Decarbonization, illustrates the tremendous potential for producing electro-sustainable aviation fuels — one member of the e-fuels family — with the highest environmental integrity and catalyzing grid transformation. The findings underscore the importance of cross-sector synergies in addressing the decarbonization challenge. In particular, e-SAF’s grid balancing potential offers an enormous opportunity for achieving aviation’s and power generation’s global net-zero goals given e-SAF’s grid balancing potential. Importantly, EDF’s paper also demonstrates the economic feasibility of e-SAF as such a cross-sector linchpin from 2030 through 2050 under a combination of factors; and, that the opportunity cost of not pursuing grid-balancing options like e-SAF would be to stymy innovation in the broader power system transition.

EDF’s analysis demonstrates that certain e-SAF pathways can unlock significant cost savings in the near- to mid-term and become frontrunners among other alternative fuels. When providing key grid balancing services, e-SAF production can help streamline renewable electricity expansion, and therefore reduce the cost of the power sector’s energy transition, while at the same time securing lower input costs for the e-SAF producer.

Good news for aviation decarbonization costs

In a rigid power system, where supply must match fixed demand 24/7, 365 days of the year, electrolysis operators pay premium rates for firm power in the ballpark of $55-70 per megawatt-hour. In a dynamic supply-driven system, where demand is flexible, rates for part-time surplus watts can drop to $5-15 per megawatt-hour. EDF’s analysis suggests that in a supply-driven system, e-SAF production costs drop by as much as half compared to mainstream estimates. Consequently, e-SAF abatement costs become the most affordable among SAF pathways. In the near term, capturing point source CO₂ concentrated in exhaust gas from industrial manufacturing and power plants keeps the overall e-SAF process relatively cheap too — around only $100-150 per tonne of fossil CO₂ avoided. This range is well within what leading carbon markets and taxation schemes assign to emissions pricing, and on par with the best-performing waste-based SAF. By 2040, this could even reach a negative abatement cost, implying a per-barrel sticker price lower for e-SAF than for conventional fossil Jet-A turbine fuel.

Good news for the U.S. grid

E-SAF deployment streamlines grid efficiency per unit of infrastructure — meaning every dollar of investment goes farther for expediting the power sector’s trajectory to net zero. EDF forecasted the economic feasibility of national-scale intermittent e-SAF deployment in the United States, considering the synergistic impacts on cost competitiveness and grid efficiency, with an option to reverse electrolyzers into fuel cells for backup power. Our findings indicate that e-SAF pathways designed for flexible bi-directional operation can significantly reduce grid transition costs. When buying surplus electricity, the electrolysis operator helps the utility pay off infrastructure expenses and avoid wasted capacity.

Enough e-SAF to overachieve the SAF Grand Challenge over three decades

According to EDF’s grid optimization model, there will be sufficient surplus renewable electricity to meet or exceed U.S. jet fuel demand in 2050, up to 64% more than necessary to fulfill the national long-term 100% SAF goal.

In the 2030s and 2040s, surplus renewable power will already be able to support cost-effective production of high-integrity e-SAF in frontrunning regions such as the Upper Mississippi River Valley, New England and Northwest Power Pool. This means that we don’t have to wait for the entire national grid mix to phase out fossil fuels before expanding transportation use cases. Instead, let’s harness niche roles like e-SAF production to assist the grid in bending its own curve.

The 2030 capacity of surplus renewable electricity in the U.S. Midwest alone, when combined with already available waste CO₂ from industrial fermentation plants, could become enough e-SAF at competitive prices to surpass the 3-billion-gallon SAF Grand Challenge’s near-term milestone.

Deep decarbonization requires integrated systems planning

Barriers to transformation must be addressed systemically, while taking care to minimize resource displacement and its ripple effects. This approach demands accounting for economic costs across the entire trajectory from now through the day we reach global net zero.

What most e-SAF cost predictions to date have failed to take into account is the potential for the transport and power sectors to work hand in hand. When considered from an integrated systems perspective, techno-economic assessments like EDF’s illuminate mutual benefits for both sectors and drive a paradigm shift. By maximizing the synergistic benefits, planners can bring decarbonization goals within reach. To support such decision-making, EDF will continue defining and curating these pathways across the power, fuels and industrial sectors.