Press release: Sustainable aviation fuels: How we can get it right

For immediate release, July 17, 2024.
(Free to republish with attributions and links intact.)

Key groups issue guiding principles to benefit people and nature

MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL— Three of Minnesota’s leading conservation and energy organizations released recommendations today to ensure that sustainable aviation fuel lives up to its name.

Aviation accounts for nearly 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector in the United States, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. With aircraft emissions on the rise, federal and state governments are urgently seeking ways to reduce aviation industry emissions through low-carbon fuel pathways that can benefit communities, mitigate climate impacts, and drive business development. 

To advance this work in Minnesota, Fresh Energy, Friends of the Mississippi River and The Nature Conservancy have released “Minnesota Sustainable Aviation Fuels Guiding Principles,” which provides a framework for the development, promotion, and use of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) that achieve climate, clean energy, ecological, and social and environmental justice goals.

“Our vision is a world in which people and nature thrive. Sustainable aviation fuels have enormous promise. If we do this right, we can significantly reduce emissions, benefit communities across the state and protect our lands and waters,” said Ann Mulholland, Director of The Nature Conservancy in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota.

The wide-scale adoption of lower-carbon fuel in the hard-to-electrify aviation industry would significantly cut greenhouse gasses from the largest source of emissions in the state, the transportation sector. SAF could also be leveraged to bolster Minnesota’s rural economies and provide additional revenue streams for farmers while simultaneously improving water and air quality — resulting in significant benefits for people, the environment and Minnesota’s climate goals.

Fresh Energy, Friends of the Mississippi River and The Nature Conservancy have released these Guiding Principles at a critical inflection point for SAF in Minnesota. Industry leaders are putting significant resources toward the rapid development of low-carbon aviation fuel, aiming to decarbonize flights while planning for massive business development in the coming decades. Meanwhile, state and federal policymakers are exploring new rules to incentivize this energy transition and usher in a new, lower-emissions era of aviation. The choices made now about Minnesota’s SAF marketplace will have an impact for decades to come.

The Guiding Principles represent core commitments to sustainability and equity that decision-makers must incorporate into the development of SAF in Minnesota. They include:

• Ensuring cropland emissions assumptions and reduction goals are rooted in science
• Defining “sustainable” to include air, water, biodiversity, and clean energy — not just a carbon intensity score
• Prioritizing and investing in sustainable aviation fuels that lean into regenerative agriculture including an emphasis on significantly lower-carbon, innovative feedstocks such as winter oilseeds, which also have huge benefits for water quality and biodiversity. 
• Leveraging SAF’s role in the energy transition to bolster rural communities while addressing the persistent environmental, economic and racial injustice and inequity in our agriculture and energy systems.

“Transportation, agriculture and climate are intertwined. There’s both promise and peril in that,” said Trevor Russell, Friends of the Mississippi River’s Water Program Director. “A Minnesota SAF that hews to these guiding principles — including prioritizing winter oilseeds as a source for biofuel — will be a win for the environment and farmers. On the other hand, if SAF commitments incentivize practices that exacerbate our current land use and water quality challenges, it could ultimately make things worse.”

“To mitigate the worst impacts of climate change, we must decarbonize every sector of our economy. This includes even the more challenging areas, like aviation,” said Margaret Cherne-Hendrick, Senior Lead, Innovation and Impact, Fresh Energy. “By not taking a leadership role in developing Minnesota’s sustainable aviation fuels marketplace, Minnesota risks increasing emissions from aviation and undermining our state’s economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions goals.”

See the full Minnesota Sustainable Aviation Fuels Guiding Principles and learn the promise — and peril — of sustainable aviation fuel at bit.ly/MN-SAF.