News

National Farmers Union of Canada concerned about potentially massive scale of sustainable aviation fuel

Canada’s National Farmers Union is concerned about the potential scale of the sustainable aviation fuel market.

Director of climate crisis policy and action Darrin Qualman says the airline industry plans to transfer the energy sources for global aviation from oil fields to farm fields.

“It is a huge, huge project over the next 25 years, many trillions of dollars, thousands of production facilities, hundreds of millions of acres, billions of tons of biomass. It really is huge.”

He tells Brownfield the initial push for SAF feedstocks will be for grains and oilseeds, with the next phases incorporating crop residues and purpose-grown energy crops like trees and grasses.

“It’s just way, way too much demand upon a limited land base in the United States and Canada, and around the world.”

Qualman says the massive scale of sustainable aviation fuel could create more negatives than positives for agriculture.