Borrill, E.L., Yuan, R. orcid.org/0000-0001-5065-8079 and Koh, S.C.L. (2026) Sustainability of aviation fuel technologies depends on geography, energy, and feedstock choice: 50-year development scenarios. npj Sustainable Mobility and Transport, 3. 47. ISSN: 3004-8664
Abstract
This work presents a combined geographically-resolved prospective lifecycle modelling and multi-criteria decision analysis of five sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production technologies using six waste-derived feedstocks across four leading producer nations (US, China, India, Brazil) from 2025 to 2075. Five hundred forty pathway-scenarios covering the 50-year evolution of each waste-to-fuel pathway are evaluated under three Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. Here, we show that the sustainability of SAF production is highly sensitive to feedstock, conversion technology, geography, and background systems. Grid decarbonisation drives SAF global warming potential (GWP) reductions by 2075, yet electrification triggers significant non-carbon trade-offs. While gasification-Fischer–Tropsch achieves the lowest GWP, 2050 multi-criteria leaders are hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) pathways, with HTL-China overtaken in 2075 by sugarcane trash gasification-Fischer–Tropsch and US used cooking oil valorisation. The US mostly demonstrates the lowest environmental impacts and India the highest, due to waste disposal practices and paradoxical ‘sustainability’ strategies that prioritise short-term coal use to secure future development targets.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
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| Authors/Creators: |
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| Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2026. Open Access: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Energy science and technology; Environmental sciences; Environmental social sciences |
| Dates: |
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| Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
| Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering |
| Funding Information: | Funder Grant number UK RESEARCH AND INNOVATION EP/Y016300/1 ENGINEERING AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL EP/Y020839/1 |
| Date Deposited: | 06 Aug 2026 07:55 |
| Last Modified: | 06 Aug 2026 07:55 |
| Status: | Published |
| Publisher: | Springer Science and Business Media LLC |
| Refereed: | Yes |
| Identification Number: | 10.1038/s44333-026-00117-0 |
| Sustainable Development Goals: | |
| Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:244209 |
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