TotalEnergies CEO fears EU walking back on SAF mandates

French energy major TotalEnergies chief executive officer Patrick Pouyanne expects the European Union to walk back on its sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) mandates by delaying the timeline further into the future as it recently reversed the decision of banning new combustion-engine cars from 2035.

Pouyanne made these remarks during his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland according to reports.

“All the airline companies are fighting the 6% SAF mandate, which frankly is easy to reach…I will make a bet today that what happened to the car regulation will happen to the SAF regulation in Europe,” he said during the panel on clean fuels.

“Today I am facing customers, my airline companies in Europe, who are making a huge lobby (effort) accusing us of not investing enough, which is completely wrong,” Pouyanne said. “I will be able to provide 10% of SAF to the airline companies in Europe by 2030, but…everybody is dreaming they can have these biofuels at the same price as (jet fuel made from) oil, but it’s not true.”

TotalEnergies has a strong SAF production pipeline with plans to introducing co-processing at existing sites.

Pouyanne said that the company is shying away from making further investments into expanding SAF production since buyers are unwilling to purchase SAF more than what the mandate requires.

“I’m afraid, as it’s a regulated market, if they move the targets, then I will have invested in biorefineries for nothing,” he said.