Carbon Neutrality
Will SAF Production be Organized in Kazakhstan?
Yevhen Pushchyk – expert, engineer BioOperations LLP
Zhumazhan Balapanov – student Munich International School
February 2, 2023 the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Kemeluly Tokayev by his Decree approved the «Strategy for achieving carbon neutrality of the Republic of Kazakhstan until 2060», an important direction of the Strategy is the decarbonization of transport in Kazakhstan, including aviation. By the way, the Government of Kazakhstan has not yet developed a roadmap for decarbonization of the country’s economy. It is necessary to pay tribute to Kazakhstan, which in May 2023 organized the first aviation dialogue in Central Asia, where attention was paid to SAF development trends in the Asian region.
The motivation for using SAF (Sustainable aviation fuel) is clear - to reduce the environmental impact of aviation on the planet. Although aviation accounts for only about 2% of global carbon emissions, it is important to reduce emissions wherever possible.
Therefore, the aviation industry is currently dependent on liquid fuels. Consequently, it is important to minimize the damage caused by liquid fuels.
Main advantage of SAF - CO2 emission reduction. Of course, this is compared to conventional jet fuel. For example, for one flight from Almaty to Astana, an Airbus 320 aircraft emits about 11 tons of harmful gases, for comparison, a passenger car that drives 100 km daily emits 4 tons of harmful gases per year.
In comparison, SAF recycles CO2 emissions that were previously emitted. These emissions are then stopped from the atmosphere during biomass production.
Another benefit of SAF is the improvement of local air quality. When used, it can reduce direcemissions compared to conventional jet fuel. Clean jet fuel can reduce up to 90% of particulate matter (PM) and up to 100% of sulfur (SOX).
Third, SAF can also provide a slight improvement in fuel efficiency. Because SAF has a higher energy density than conventional jet fuel, there can be a 1.5-3% increase in fuel efficiency.
The disadvantages of SAF come down to price and availability
As it might be expected, SAF is more expensive to produce than conventional jet fuel, today in Rotterdam 1 tonne of SAF costs around US$2,000 and 1 tonne of Jet costs US$900.
Given that SAF is a relatively new product and is produced in smaller quantities than conventional jet fuel, there are simply no economies of scale to bring the price down to the price of jet fuel.
So, when it comes to fuelling an aircraft, SAF will cost more than conventional jet fuel. And as is customary, these costs are passed on to the cost of airline tickets
The second disadvantage of SAF is availability. Naturally, SAF cannot be stored in the same tanks as jet fuel. Consequently, airports need alternative means to support this alternative.
Currently, there are 38 airports worldwide that offer clean jet fuel, with over 8,000 airports worldwide.
In terms of SAF production figures, production levels in 2025 are expected to be around 17 times higher than in 2020.
In 2020, just over 59 million gallons of SAF were produced. (1 gallon - 3.785 litres).
In 2022, more than 736 million gallons of SAF were produced. More than 820 million gallons are expected to be produced in 2023; in 2025, more than 1.01 billion gallons of clean jet fuel are expected to be produced.
Experts say four pathways will play an important role in reducing aviation emissions, including HEFA (Hydrotreated Ethers and Fatty Acids), ATJ (Alcohol to Jet Fuel), Biomass Gasification + FT (Gas+FT), The Power to Liquid (PtL) conversion of energy to liquid.
Estimated SAF production in 2030 and its contribution to total EU jet fuel demand by feedstock.
et fuel demand by feedstock. Agriculture is an excellent raw material base for bioenergy development. The following model cluster, which is implemented in some countries of the world, is a classic model of circular economy of agriculture and agro-food system, considering the peculiarities of its functioning.
In Kazakhstan, there are prerequisites for at least partial implementation of such a project, but local business is not ready to implement such projects, and the Ministry of Agriculture is immersed in current problems related to dumping in the market of Russian grain producers, weather conditions and others.
The EBRD is financing the feasibility study and the main purpose of this assignment is to support key stakeholders in Kazakhstan to give impetus to the development of SAF in Kazakhstan. The feasibility study is being developed by ICF /www. icf.com/, by the way it is not clear whether the company’s representatives were in Kazakhstan or whether they are writing the feasibility study from London without understanding the mentality of the country or the specifics of the raw material base.
During my negotiations with ICF in August - September, was recommended by KMG and Аir Astana, as a local expert on raw materials, emphasised the main emphasis on the raw material base.
1) grain - in ethylene-alcohol and SAF technology ATJ,
2) MSW - FT synthesis gas - in SAF Fischer-Tropsch (FT) for municipal solid waste (MSW),
3) animal and crop waste - biogas - FT and SAF Biomass Gasification + Fischer - Tropsch (Gas+FT),
4) flue gases (blast furnace and coke oven gases) of MMC into ethylene - alcohol - SAF
There are no other sources of feedstock for SAF in RK. Unfortunately, ICF claimed to me the opposite, that the main thing is technology.
Total nonsense, no feedstock, but why technology?
But what happened is that ICF is writing a feasibility study and French Axens is involved. We are waiting for a feasibility study from