Un sou est un sou: France announces $113m for SAF projects

opinion

by Fayaz Hussain

April 28, 2025

The French proverb “Un sou est un sou” – every penny counts – applies most when it comes to climate action specially for scaling innovative technologies. Many startups fail to attract capital at the pre-front-end engineering design (FEED) phase.

To help cross this turbulent stage, the French government recently announced €100m ($113.5m) funding for four domestic sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) projects. The funding was part of the government’s Carb Aero call for projects, part of its ambitious France 2030 programme.

Although the ticket size per project translates to a relatively low figure of $28m, projects usually require much smaller funding to get to the FEED stage with future large ticket capital lined up for post-FEED stages.

“France is today a world leader in the aeronautical industry, a sector of excellence of which we are proud. Tomorrow, France will be a world leader in decarbonised air transport,” said Marc Ferracci, the country’s minister of industry and energy. “By 2030, in France, pioneering industrial projects will produce synthetic sustainable aviation fuels thanks to the abundant decarbonised electricity in our territory.”

The four projects – France KerEAUzen (Engie), TAKE KAIR (Hynamics), DéZIR (Verso Energy) and BioTjet (Elyse Energy) – are collectively expected to produce 270,000 tons of SAF per annum from 2030 onwards.

From the technology point of view, the funding will support three key production pathways: methanol-to-jet processes (DéZIR), Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (KerEAUzen and TAKE KAIR) and the BioTfuel (BioTjet) process. Spreading investment across multiple promising pathways instead of already proven pathways would go a long way in improving the technology readiness level of these innovative solutions.

“[This announcement] provides funding for FEED studies which was very much a big ask from the project developers in France because that was the critical bottleneck for them to advance their projects,” Max Held, coordinator at Project SkyPower tells SAF Investor. Project Skypower is an initiative led by eSAF CEOs to overcome challenges faced by eSAF in Europe.

Engie’s KerEAUzen, based in the northern port of Le Havre will produce 70,000 tons of e-kerosene annually using captured CO2. Hynamics’ TAKE KAIR in Saint-Nazaire will generate 37,500 tons of SAF yearly by capturing CO2 from a Lafarge cement plant.

Verso’s DéZIR project in Rouen, the largest with 81,000 tons of anticipated annual production, will use a distinctive methanol-to-jet process. The project’s success will serve as a template for three additional facilities across France. Finally, Elyse Energy’s BioTjet in the Lacq basin of south eastern France is employing a biomass-based approach, using sustainable forestry resources and agricultural by-products to produce 82,000 tons of e-biokerosene annually through the BioTfuel process.

“This is a really good step … in terms of development expenditure support, but it doesn’t solve the bankability question and it doesn’t get projects to final investment decision (FID) per se. It just advances projects further towards FID. In order to get projects to FID, I still believe that we need to see a market intermediary that hosts those double-sided auctions,” added Held.

Although the projects will need more funding to scale up, still every penny counts.