Tardy last year Vancouver aviation analyst Mark Miller bought plane tickets to take his family of four to Rome this summer. The Millers spent high season in Italy scouring age-old city ruins, touring the Vatican and diving to Sardinia to admire spectacular sea cliffs, white sand beaches and age-old limestone caves.
Five months later, CBC News commentator Miller watched in disbelief as Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman through which nearly 20 percent of the world’s oil supplies flow.
The unprecedented shutdown has caused global stocks of jet fuel to plummet, depleting strategic reserves in the UK, Germany and France. “Reports from Europe say fuel supplies could run out by the end of June, which was around the time we were there,” Miller says. “The last thing we wanted was to be stuck in Europe.”
As the war in Iran continued, supply shortages spread to the United States. on Thursday, – an American Airlines spokesman told USA Today that it will temporarily suspend several domestic routes in August and September due to rising jet fuel prices.
In the end, the Millers canceled their trip, and millions of summer travelers are making the same mental calculus. As carriers cancel thousands of flights ahead of potential fuel shortages, Miller and other analysts have turned their attention to sustainable aviation fuel, commonly called SAF, which can reduce emissions by up to 80 percent but costs two to five times more than regular jet fuel. United Airlines, Delta, American and Cathay Pacific are among the carriers currently using SAF.
“Right now, conventional jet fuel appears to be twice as expensive during the summer travel season,” says Lauren Riley, chief sustainability officer at United Airlines. “It makes SAF look like a more financially competitive alternative. In fact, it’s the closest to parity we’ve ever seen. It’s the first time in my career that we’re actually talking about it.”
Before the lockdown, summer 2026 was shaping up to be the post-Covid return of commercial aviation. Riley says that with the FIFA World Cup, America’s Sesquicentennial celebrations and Harry Styles’ “Together, Together” world tour, demand for summer travel has never been greater.
Faced with rising prices and increased demand, the airline industry hopes SAF will assist fill this gap. Produced from renewable resources such as used cooking oil and leftover French fry grease, SAF can be blended with conventional jet fuel as a substitute without having to change the aircraft’s design.
American conglomerate World Energy began converting agricultural waste, fats, oils and greases into SAF at its production facility in Paramount, California, in 2016, becoming the first commercial-scale producer of this fuel. “There is almost no difference downstream in the purification process and the mixing process,” says Joseph Ran, vice president of asset optimization at World Energy. “You just need to add an additional mixing step of mixing the SAF and the fossil fuel.”
According to Ran, the technology is basic. The problem is creating a reliable supply. Bottlenecks such as scarcity of raw materials called feedstocks, convoluted infrastructure, and costly manufacturing processes keep the industry’s SAF apply at less than 1 percent of total global jet fuel consumption. World Energy, which supplied SAF to United Airlines, Air France, KLM and others, ended SAF production last year “as part of an overall effort to better concentrate the company’s resources,” according to a company spokesman.
However, this year’s oil crisis has highlighted the need for an alternative to jet fuel. “The closure of the strait is a very clear example of over-reliance on one commodity,” says Scott Lewis, president of World Energy’s Net-Zero Services group. In April, United formed a consortium with Microsoft, DSV and Houston-based multinational energy company Phillips 66 to scale up production and unlock 11 million gallons of SAF.