Ireland bets on green eSAF to meet demand

For a country with a population of 5.4m people, Ireland’s consumption of cooking oil per capita is significantly high. The Irish consumed 17kg per capita in 2013, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization’s statistics, placing it in the top third globally at the time. But despite this high consumption, Ireland is betting on eSAF to deliver the volumes needed to decarbonise aviation.

This was made clear in its recently launched Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) Policy Roadmap 2025. Unveiled by the country’s Transport Minister Darragh O’Brien, the roadmap lists four policy pathways: market certainty, collaboration, supporting uptake and supporting production. These are designed to align Ireland with the EU’s SAF mandates and set the stage for domestic production.

“The roadmap recognises the important contribution that SAF can make toward decarbonising the aviation industry and it aims to provide the building blocks for the deployment of SAF in Ireland,” said O’Brien.

For production, the policy sets out short-, medium- and long-term goals. The short-term strategy emphasises the need to employ co-processing at existing refineries using used cooking oil and tallow as feedstocks.

While Ireland has one facility that could theoretically produce conventional aviation fuel and SAF, neither is currently produced domestically, meaning SAF demand will initially be met through imports.

In the medium-term, the policy envisages advanced biofuels from agricultural and forestry residues. The roadmap identifies potential indigenous feedstocks including woody biomass like sawdust and woodchip by-products, agricultural waste residues and algae cultivation.

“This indicates that we will continue to rely on bio-based feedstocks for advanced biofuels in the short- to medium-term,” said Agnes Thornton, co-founder of Sustainable Flight Solutions, a Dublin-based SAF consulting firm.

However, the reality of feedstock limitations looms large. “It’s important to note that the EU bio-based feedstock market is already saturated. In Ireland, for example, second-generation feedstocks like used cooking oils [UCO] and tallow offer limited growth potential,” Thornton warned. The roadmap acknowledges these bio-based feedstock limitations.

Despite these constraints, the policy identifies a significant long-term opportunity in eSAF production. This approach would leverage Ireland’s substantial offshore renewable energy ambitions, with targets to deliver 5GW by 2030, 20GW by 2040 and 37GW by 2050 – about seven times the country’s current energy demand.

“Based on the results of our study conducted in 2023, e-SAF production was highlighted as having substantial potential in Ireland, particularly considering the substantial opportunities for green hydrogen production and the availability of biogenic CO2 feedstocks,” said Thornton, referencing a joint study conducted by Sustainable Flight Solutions with SkyNRG, Avolon, Boeing and Orix Aviation.

The study identified a potential SAF market in Ireland worth €2.55bn ($3bn) by 2050, positioning the country as a potential major player in the eSAF sector during the 2030s and 2040s when these technologies are expected to reach commercial viability.

Realising this potential requires substantial infrastructure development. The Irish government allocated €750m ($875m) in its 2025 Budget to facilitate development of electricity grid infrastructure, recognising that eSAF production requires enormous amounts of renewable electricity – at least 36 megawatt hours to produce one tonne of eSAF.

Projections by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland estimate that under moderate growth assumptions, SAF demand will reach 88,000t by 2030 and 318,000t by 2035. The roadmap stresses the need for continued engagement through the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Task Force, which may extend its mandate beyond the initial publication phase.

Thornton noted: “Whatever incentives are put in place by policy development in Ireland, we would like to see these being applied in a coordinated and well-structured way, considering the multi-sector involvement from feedstock to SAF production and blending.”

Ireland’s ambitious roadmap represents both the challenges and opportunities facing smaller nations in the transition to SAF. But whether betting on future technological maturity and renewable energy abundance will pay off, only time will tell.

Or maybe the country could ramp up its UCO usage. Either way the Emerald Ilse clearly needs careful planning to meet its green fuel demands.