This March 2022 FAA presentation to the REDAC Energy & Environment Subcommittee provides an overview of Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF), highlighting both opportunities—such as drop-in compatibility with existing aircraft and infrastructure, and the potential to reduce lifecycle carbon emissions—and challenges including high production costs, limited incentives, and blend limits capped at 50%. The FAA's SAF program focuses on three areas: testing and accelerating fuel development, analyzing environmental and economic sustainability, and coordinating with public-private partnerships and international bodies like ICAO. While primarily focused on aviation decarbonization broadly, the program's emissions-reduction goals have indirect relevance to noise and environmental policy discussions at major airports like Sea-Tac.Open full document
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FAA presentation by Nate Brown and Anna Oldani to the REDAC Energy & Environment (E&E) Subcommittee on March 22, 2022, covering Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) opportunities and challenges. Discusses SAF as a drop-in fuel, lifecycle emissions reductions, seven approved production pathways, two co-processing pathways, scalable feedstocks (wastes, residues, biomass, sugars, oils), blend limits capped at 50%, production cost barriers, incentive gaps, certification challenges, and sustainability credibility. FAA SAF program focus areas include testing (ASCENT, CLEEN), analysis (Volpe Center, NextGen lifecycle emissions, cost reduction, supply chain), and coordination (CAAFI public-private partnership, U.S. interagency cooperation, ICAO international cooperation).