Future Energy Global wants to be the catalyst for SAF

opinion

by Fayaz Hussain

November 24, 2025

In their seminal work ‘Catalyst Code’ published in 2007, economists David S. Evans and Richard L. Schmalensee identified a powerful but overlooked category of business: the economic catalyst.

These platform businesses create value not by producing goods themselves but facilitating interactions between two or more customers who need each other. It’s not like catalysts didn’t exist before Evans and Schmalensee identified them. Markets, banks, matchmakers have done this for centuries. But the argument stands. They solved the fundamental problem of bringing together parties who would otherwise struggle to find each other.

The sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) industry has a similar problem – not because airlines can’t find producers but acquiring SAF and blending into the fuel mix can require solving a complex web of logistics, contracts, certifications and compliance hurdles. This has left the relatively new market fragmented and SAF more expensive.

Future Energy Global (FE) has positioned itself as the economic catalyst. The Dublin-based company recently launched its multi-buyer pilot bringing 10 firms including DHL, JetBlue, SAS and 4Air, to acquire 20,000 tonnes of SAF. The pilot helps these companies acquire SAF’s environment attributes without feeling the need to physically lift the molecules.

By being in the middle of the transaction and connecting buyers such as airlines and corporates with SAF producers, the firm wants to reduce the friction that would otherwise delay offtakes.

“The biggest airline pain point is trying to figure out how to accommodate for SAF with their current contracts,” says Natasha Mann, CEO and co-founder of Future Energy Global. “Those contracts run anywhere between 12 and 24 months, and in order to put SAF into the mix, there is a whole lot of logistical hurdles that these airlines have to go through,” she told us.

Mann says airlines face challenges with blending, supply chain logistics and simply getting SAF to work within their current fuel procurement cycles. “Even when they’ve found the neat SAF, they can’t necessarily work it into their current fuel contract. They don’t necessarily have the logistics in place.”

But Future Energy Global solves this gap by their book and claim solution. By allowing transference of environmental benefits of SAF separately from the physical fuel molecules, it eliminates the need to physically ship SAF across continents. This process not only saves transportation emissions but also reduces costs.

Patrick Edmond, Future Energy Global’s chief commercial officer tells SAF Investor that airlines saw the appeal in book and claim but were hesitant to pioneer it alone.

“What we were hearing from a number of airlines was that they liked book and claim as an approach, but they didn’t necessarily want to put their heads above the parapet by themselves,” Edmond says. With Future Energy Global’s book and claim, airlines can continue their operations and contracts without any headaches and incorporate SAF.

Future Energy Global acts as principal in these transactions. It signs the long-term SAF offtake agreements with producers for environmental attributes. The company is registered with both Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials and International Sustainability and Carbon Certification.

It signed a multi-year offtake SAF purchase agreement with Montana Renewables in March. “The fuel producer then just has to figure out how to get the fuel into their local airports as regular fuel, as the molecules. It’s so much easier for them,” says Mann.

While the model benefits buyers by delivering them environmental attributes without the headache of blending the fuel, producers save costs by selling where they can produce it cheaply and avoid the delays and costs associated with transporting it to where airlines fly.

“It’s [the model] a little bit like eBay for SAF producers,” Edmond said. “If you are a very cost-effective SAF producer, for example, in a developing country or you’re in a country that has very good incentives, previously you had to think about the logistics to put your SAF on a ship and bring it to the other side of the world. With this model, you can uplift the molecules in your local market, but the environmental benefits which have a value can be traded globally.”

By allowing SAF to be produced where it is most cost-effective and letting it benefit from US tax incentives or lower feedstock prices in developing countries and be consumed locally, this model optimises the SAF economics across the entire value chain.

It makes sense in practice as well. Imagine a producer having to deliver just 10t, 100t or 1,000t of SAF to airports for individual buyers like airlines or corporate travellers. The transportation costs alone would make the purchase uneconomical. “Now the fuel producer doesn’t have to think about any of that. And it also allows the airlines then to start purchasing SAF in smaller amounts,” says Mann.

Future Energy’s pilot includes three corporate partners who are in it to purchase Scope 3 attributes. This segment is what Future Energy thinks will be critical in scaling SAF demand and bringing down costs. The demand from them is only increasing.

The company could be the next economic catalyst. After all, that’s what Google and Amazon are and they are valued at more than $1 trillion today.