HEFA Is Not Running Out of Oil.
Elvis Ebikade, PhD · May 26, 2026
Four feedstock categories are widening the HEFA oil supply. The industry narrative has not caught up.
As of today, >95% of global SAF supply comes from the hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids (HEFA) pathway, with the US alone having built over 5 billion gallons of renewable diesel and SAF refining capacity using HEFA technology. Globally, currently announced HEFA projects will bring its total capacity to roughly 8 billion gallons by 2030. These facilities generating commercial-scale volumes of SAF took several years to finance, permit and construct, representing billions of dollars of invested capital that is already commercially de-risked and producing on-spec jet fuel today.
Looking at the broader SAF demand, EU's ReFuelEU Aviation mandate requires 6% SAF by 2030 (roughly 3.2 million tonnes), rising to 70% by 2050. The UK's SAF mandate requires 10% by 2030, with a HEFA-specific cap that drops from 71% in 2030 to 35% by 2040, explicitly forcing feedstock diversification. The US SAF Grand Challenge targets 3 billion gallons by 2030 and 35 billion gallons by 2050. On the voluntary side, Delta, American, Southwest, Cathay Pacific, and Qantas have each set 10% SAF targets, while United has committed to at least 5% SAF target for 2030. US airlines alone consume roughly 20 billion gallons of jet fuel annually, and across major carriers globally, implied neat SAF demand runs well over a billion gallons a year, and to meet these numbers, the industry needs more SAF.
The conversation about how to get there starts, almost without exception, from the same premise: HEFA oil feedstocks are constrained, so the industry needs to look at other pathways, whether alcohol-to-jet (ATJ), Fischer-Tropsch (FT), or power-to-liquid, and each pathway has its strength and merit. The industry does need to diversify across more technologies, more feedstocks, and more pathways, because successfully meeting both mandated and voluntary SAF demand requires it. But why exactly are HEFA feedstocks seen as constrained? UCO supply is indeed limited by how much the world cooks and fries, tallow is being competed for by alternative road diesel, oleochemicals, and SAF simultaneously, and soybean oil sits in the middle of the food-versus-fuel debate because it is a major food crop and the EU essentially excludes crop-based fuels from its SAF mandates. While these constraints are our present reality, treating them as permanent features, especially as the SAF industry evolves comes at a cost that the industry does not discuss enough. If the narrative settles on "HEFA feedstock is constrained, so we pivot to other pathways," then we risk idling meaningful refining infrastructure, assets, and capacity worth billions of dollars which have been commercially de-risked and that took years to finance, permit, and build which would likely impair the energy transition we are pushing to advance. The question we should be asking is "how do we address the feedstock constraint and keep this infrastructure running?", rather than "what do we replace HEFA with?" Addressing the feedstock constraint creates a longer pipeline for the existing capacity the industry has already built while continuing to expand alternative pathways in parallel. This article documents four feedstock categories that are widening the HEFA oil supply:
Expanded aggregation of waste-derived oils (UCO, tallow, distillers corn oil, poultry fats, and other rendered fats) into markets the industry has not yet reached.
Novel oil crops grown as intermediate crops on fallow land.
Biomass-derived oils from thermochemical and thermocatalytic conversion of lignocellulosic material.
Oils produced from carbon emissions through microbial and thermochemical routes that bypass agriculture entirely.
As we walk through each of them, we become intimate with their binding constraints, timeline to commercial scale, and the picture that emerges is not "HEFA is running out" but "HEFA is being rebuilt on a wider feedstock base, in real time.
1. Expanding waste-derived oil aggregation into untapped markets
UCO, tallow, and distillers corn oil (DCO) are the headline names, but the category is broader, including poultry fats, other rendered animal fats, and recovered vegetable oils from food processing. DCO tracks US corn ethanol production; poultry fats are a growing subcategory in the US and Brazil. All inherit a "post-existing-purpose" framing: the cooking already happened, the animal was already rendered, the ethanol was already produced, carrying low carbon intensity and no direct food-versus-fuel exposure. On the sustainability front, waste-derived oils are the most mature category, with ISCC, RSB, and CORSIA certification pathways established and operational. The constraints on waste-derived oils as they exist today are mainly structural. You cannot grow UCO; its volume scales with food and population demand, rather than SAF demand. Aggregation is fragmented, fraud risk is documented, particularly for UCO imports from Asia, where virgin palm oil relabeled as UCO has been reported, and alternative diesel mandates in the EU and US are competing for the same feedstock supply. However, these are the constraints as they stand in the geographies the industry currently collects from, and the current aggregation geography is not the full picture.
Today, UCO collection for biofuels is concentrated in a relatively small number of markets: China, Indonesia, the Strait of Malacca corridor, the EU, and the US. These are the regions where collection infrastructure exists and where volumes are mostly spoken for or projected to come from. What the constraint narrative misses is the number of large-population, high-cooking-oil-consumption markets that are not yet in the UCO collection landscape at all and could add meaningful volumes as aggregation infrastructure develops. Nigeria, with over 220 million people and widespread frying-based food preparation, is one example; ORORO WASTE MANAGEMENT is building a professionalized UCO collection network in Nigeria with the Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency (LASEPA) that did not exist three years ago. India, with 1.4 billion people and one of the highest per-capita cooking oil consumption rates in the world, is another market where organized UCO aggregation is in early stages. Latin America, Southeast Asia beyond the Malacca corridor, and East Africa follow the same pattern. In Thailand, the PTT Global Chemical PTTGC and QSNCC institutional partnership is a model for what professionalized, high-trust UCO supply chains look like when the infrastructure is deliberately organized rather than pieced together from fragmented sources. In East Africa, Bleriot Group is exploring the use of cotton-seed oil, a byproduct of the textile industry, as HEFA feedstock, adding a new waste-oil subcategory to the collection picture. The opportunity in category 1 is not to invent a new feedstock; it is to expand the aggregation of a feedstock that already exists in large volumes across markets the industry has not yet reached.
Waste-derived oils would remain a critical backbone for the foreseeable future, and the supply ceiling is higher than the current narrative suggests as aggregation expands into markets that are not yet in the collection landscape. The category alone will not carry HEFA scaling to meet the mandated and voluntary demand as growth needs to come from the other three feedstock categories and SAF pathways. But treating waste-derived oil supply as fixed, rather than as expandable through geographic and infrastructure development, understates what this category can contribute.
2. Growing novel oil crops
The thesis here is intermediate cropping: growing oil crops in the fallow windows between main crop harvests, on existing farmland, using species that fit into existing rotation cycles. Intermediate crops do not displace food production, which sidesteps the food-versus-fuel tension structurally rather than rhetorically. This is a fundamentally different approach from the earlier generation of oil crop bets (Jatropha, broadly), where yields did not scale, marginal land had marginal economics, and farmer adoption proved difficult.
The crop taxonomy is much broader than most SAF coverage suggests. The 2024 revision of the EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED III) added intermediate crops to Annex IX, the list of sustainable bio feedstocks eligible for advanced biofuel production, and that regulatory expansion is the reason this category now attracts serious research and capital. Concawe's 2026 report, commissioned in direct response to the Annex IX expansion, assessed seven oil species (Camelina, Crambe, White Mustard, Carinata, Safflower, Sunflower, Castor). The top performers are Camelina, Crambe, and White Mustard, with White Mustard already commercial at scale in France, Germany, and the Netherlands.
Intermediate crops are bound by growing time and need enough days between main crop harvest and next planting to reach maturity. In much of the EU, only about 25% of summer fallow land and roughly 2% of winter fallow land can accommodate oil intermediate crops under current varieties, and the yield penalty from compressed growing windows is structural, not a matter of optimization. Concawe's modeling shows that a 20% reduction in growing-day requirements could increase winter crop potential sevenfold, making shorter-season varieties through targeted breeding the highest-leverage R&D intervention available in this space today. By 2050, Concawe estimates the EU potential at 12.7 to 13.2 million tonnes of oilseeds from summer intermediate crops alone (4.0 to 4.2 Mtoe of advanced biofuel), covering roughly 20 to 25% of projected EU SAF demand under ReFuelEU, which is significant but bounded.
But the growing-time constraint is regional, not universal, and that is where the global picture changes. The Concawe analysis is scoped to the EU, where fallow windows are short and winters limit planting options. In tropical and subtropical regions, the calculus is different. Brazil already demonstrates the principle: in many Brazilian states, farmers plant a second crop of corn after the primary harvest, within the same growing season, without incurring a land use change penalty, because the planting duration allows it. That same logic applies to oil intermediate crops. Species like Camelina, which struggle with compressed European fallow windows, may find longer growing seasons and more favorable rotation cycles in sub-Saharan Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia. The question is whether seed supply, agronomic support, and farmer adoption infrastructure can develop in those regions to match the opportunity that the climate provides.
Interestingly, capital has been moving to scale these intermediate crops across multiple geographies. In Europe and North America, bp and Corteva Agriscience launched Etlas in 2026 as a joint venture for intermediate oilseed crops (canola, mustard, sunflower). BP also has a strategic alliance with Bayer to scale Camelina, NUSEED GLOBAL INNOVATION LTD is developing Carinata as a dedicated cover crop for biofuel, and Terviva has secured investments from both Chevron and Idemitsu Renewables to scale pongamia production across the US and Australia, with 15 years of field trials spanning nearly 2,000 acres and trees producing three or more metric tons of beans per acre. In Uruguay, ALUR - Alcoholes del Uruguay (part of the state-owned ANCAP Group) is pioneering winter canola and emerging Pongamia as part of a broader Southern Cone SAF platform, holding continuous ISCC EU certification since 2016 and 2BSvs since 2022, with over 85% of its canola supply EU RED compliant; separately, ANCAP selected Topsoe's HydroFlex technology for a 3,000 barrel-per-day HEFA unit at the La Teja Refinery in Montevideo (final investment decision expected 2027, commercial operations 2030). In Brazil, Macauba (Acrocomia aculeata), a native palm that grows on degraded pastureland in semi-arid conditions, is attracting capital as well: BASF signed a long-term supplier finance agreement with INOCAS in 2024 to develop Macauba oil production at industrial scale, targeting 50,000 hectares by 2030 on rehabilitated degraded land with smallholder farmers, while Acelen Renewables is building a $1.5 billion biorefinery in Bahia designed around Macauba as the primary feedstock, targeting 1 billion litres of SAF and renewable diesel per year.
Securing sustainability certification for these newer feedstocks which are not yet in ISCC or RSB certified feedstock lists under CORSIA/ICAO would be critical for integration into the SAF production landscape. For each new feedstock, demonstrating a low enough carbon intensity that delivers a meaningful CI reduction in the finished SAF product, relative to conventional jet is essential. The pattern across these projects indicates a consolidation around novel oil crops as a credible commercial path to widening HEFA feedstock supply, and the thesis is not confined to any single region.
3. Converting lignocellulosic biomass into HEFA-compatible oils
Take lignocellulosic biomass (woody residues, agricultural residues, energy crops) and thermochemically or thermocatalytically convert it into oil, the resource base is by far the largest available feedstock category globally. If even a fraction of lignocellulosic biomass routes into the liquid-fuel system, the HEFA supply math changes fundamentally and multiple routes exist.
Fast pyrolysis produces a complex oxygenated mixture (roughly 35 to 40% oxygen by weight), with a long history of pilot and demonstration plants and a slower-than-hoped path to commercial deployment. Hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) produces a heavier oil at lower oxygen (roughly 10 to 20%), and because it uses water as the reaction medium, it tolerates wet feedstocks that pyrolysis cannot handle. Organosolv fractionation selectively deconstructs biomass into cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin streams before any oil-forming step, producing more chemically defined intermediates. Bioleum Corporation's lignol platform operates in this category: the biomass is fractionated upstream so the resulting oil is more tunable for downstream conversion, and the output can route either through Bioleum's own conversion technology or through partnerships with HEFA refiners doing co-processing. Reductive catalytic fractionation (RCF) is a newer route that converts native lignin directly into well-defined aromatic monomers. Earlier-stage than pyrolysis or HTL, but the trade-off is a cleaner product slate and more selective chemistry.
The technical challenges in this category are centered primarily on oil composition or HEFA integration quality. UCO and tallow are simple triglycerides, while biomass-derived oils from pyrolysis could contain fifteen or more distinct component classes: phenolics, alkanes, cycloalkanes, nitrogen-containing hydrocarbons, furans, organic acids. Some operators have managed to lower oxygen content down to roughly 13%, approaching the 10 to 12% range of UCO and soybean oil. But the gap from 13% to "drop-in HEFA compatible" is not just a number, but more of an oil composition problem, as HEFA hydrotreaters were designed for triglyceride feeds, not for complex multi-component mixtures. In addition, catalyst poisoning from ash and alkali metals, hydrogen demand, and feedstock traceability (distinguishing residue from dedicated biomass) are parallel constraints.
These categories of oil feedstocks will require upgrading technology that can handle compositional complexity, not just reduce bulk oxygen, co-processing economics that work at realistic blend ratios (likely 5 to 15% initial blends, not 100% substitution). Integrated fractionation approaches (organosolv, RCF) that produce more narrowly defined intermediates upstream, reducing the burden on downstream hydrotreating. The case for selective deconstruction over brute-force thermal conversion is the case for reducing compositional complexity before it reaches the HEFA refinery.
Several recent partnerships and demonstrations illustrate the progress. BioVeritas recently partnered with Topsoe to integrate BioVeritas's KEYtones cellulosic oil intermediates with Topsoe's HydroFlex upgrading technology. That Topsoe thread is worth noting: HydroFlex is also the technology ANCAP selected for its HEFA unit in Uruguay (category 2), which means the same hydroprocessing platform is now showing up across multiple feedstock categories. In Sweden, Preem AB's refinery in Lysekil has processed 50,000 tonnes of pyrolysis oil derived from sawdust at an existing petroleum refinery, one of the earliest commercial-scale demonstrations of biomass-derived oil co-processing in refining infrastructure. EkoTrend Biofuels using a friction-based pyrolysis process (PyroFriction) operating at 300 to 350 C, reported oxygen content in its bio-oil output as low as roughly 13%, a reduction from 35 to 40% to roughly one-third of that level. Lower oxygen content is necessary but not sufficient for SAF-grade conversion, because the compositional complexity described above persists even at lower bulk oxygen levels. AIO in Estonia converts agricultural and wood industry side-streams into fats and oils via fermentation. C16 Biosciences produces a fermentation-derived palm oil substitute using yeast, and Melt&Marble in Sweden uses precision fermentation of sugars to produce designer fats; both are currently focused on food and personal care applications, but the molecules they produce are HEFA-compatible triglycerides and could route into SAF refining as production scales.
On the research side, National Laboratory of the Rockies's bioeconomy optimization study modeled catalytic fast pyrolysis at national scale using US forestland data and found the pathway can contribute up to 4.6 billion gallons of SAF annually by 2040, meeting 13% of the DOE's SAF Grand Challenge target with 85 to 92% greenhouse gas reduction compared to conventional jet fuel. The study's optimizer exclusively selected collocating pyrolysis operations with existing petroleum refineries as the most cost-effective deployment strategy, consistent with what Preem is already demonstrating in practice. Separately, KU Leuven demonstrated molecule-to-molecule conversion of RCF lignin oil to SAF-range naphthenes, with the lightest fraction achieving 74% relative carbon yield in the C8 to C18 SAF range. This category' resource ceiling is highest, however the conversion technology and product quality for HEFA integration is the major constraint.
Under the EU and UK mandates, biomass-derived oils processed through HEFA should qualify as advanced biofuel SAF, contributing to the main SAF obligation and could sit within the declining HEFA cap. Fermentation-derived triglycerides from companies like C16 Biosciences, Melt&Marble, and AIO would follow the same classification, offering a pathway to meet advanced biofuel SAF requirements using existing HEFA refining infrastructure while the build out of commercial ATJ or FT SAF facilities continues.
4. Producing oils from carbon emissions
This category produces oils from captured carbon, whether from industrial process emissions (CO2, methane, syngas, flue gas), liquid waste streams (crude glycerin, refinery effluents), or ultimately from direct air capture and converting them to a triglyceride or fatty acid that routes into HEFA refining. On the microbial side, Cemvita Inc. produces oils from crude glycerin and is exploring carbon-containing gases (CO2, methane, syngas) as feedstock; their 2026 partnership with Radix in Brazil expands into a market with abundant glycerin from biodiesel production. On the thermochemical side, Savor produces triglycerides from carbon and hydrogen which is currently sold as margarine and cooking fats, with those same molecules potentially expanded to serve the HEFA SAF market.
The challenges in the category are cost and carbon accounting. If the CO2 input comes from an industrial emitter, the carbon accounting would depend on boundary decisions (emitter credit versus converter credit), and hydrogen sourcing determines whether the LCA story holds (green hydrogen) or collapses (gray hydrogen). Facilities are typically capital-intensive, though co-location with carbon rich emitters (e.g. breweries) or integration with direct air capture infrastructure could reduce logistics costs over time. Unlike the other three categories, the feedstock here is not constrained by agriculture or biomass logistics, but by carbon availability itself, whether captured from industrial processes or pulled from the atmosphere via direct air capture. The supply ceiling, in principle, does not exist in the way it does for waste derived oils, intermediate crops, or lignocellulosic biomass. The constraints are mainly economic and technical: production costs currently estimated at two to five times those of commodity triglycerides, unresolved CI attribution questions, and the capital intensity of first-of-a-kind facilities.
Interestingly, under the EU and UK mandates, thermochemical triglycerides produced from non-biogenic CO2 and green hydrogen could qualify as e-fuels under the UK PtL sub-mandate (0.2% by 2028, rising to 3.5% by 2040) and the EU synthetic fuel obligation (1.2% by 2030, rising to 35% by 2050). Most standalone e-fuel pathways (Fischer-Tropsch power-to-liquid) are estimated at $10 to $25 per gallon. Triglycerides routed through existing HEFA infrastructure could come in well below that, potentially making this category one of the most cost-competitive paths to meeting e-fuel mandates while leveraging assets the industry has already built.
A note on sustainability certification
All four categories described above require robust sustainability certification to scale credibly. As HEFA feedstock supply expands into new crops, new conversion routes, and new carbon sources, the sustainability profile of each feedstock needs to be established with the same rigor the industry applies to UCO and tallow today. That means traceability (where did this feedstock come from, and can you prove it?), chain of custody (did it maintain its identity and integrity through the supply chain?), life-cycle analysis and ILUC accounting (what is the full carbon footprint, including indirect effects?), and carbon intensity attribution (whose emissions get credited, and what energy inputs were used in conversion?). These are prerequisites for capital deployment, regulatory compliance, and market credibility across schemes that govern this space: ISCC, RSB, and CORSIA, established and operational for conventional HEFA feedstocks. Extending them to cover novel oil crops, biomass-derived oils, and carbon-captured oils is work that needs to happen in parallel with technology development. If the sustainability certification lags the technology, the industry will have new feedstocks that it cannot use at scale because the documentation does not exist to prove or substantiate their decarbonization value.
Wrapping up
These four categories together substantially expand the HEFA feedstock supply landscape, and they do so in a way that affords us the opportunity to continue to leverage HEFA refining infrastructure, assets, and capacity the SAF industry has already built. Waste-derived oils, cultivated oil crops, and carbon emission-based oils (categories 1, 2, and 4) integrate directly into existing HEFA refining infrastructure largely because their oil profiles are chemically compatible with the hydrotreaters already in operation. Biomass-derived oils (category 3) on the other hand, require more adaptation, whether through pretreatment, co-processing at lower blend ratios, or upstream fractionation, but the research and pilot work documented above shows that even this category is finding pathways into the existing refining base.
As we scale SAF by expanding HEFA feedstock into existing refining infrastructure, ATJ, Fischer-Tropsch, and power-to-liquid all have legitimate roles to diversify and grow the broader SAF portfolio. Overall, each pathway would be better resilient if built on its own standalone economics, because the goal is to deliver the lower cost of production and more affordable SAF over time, facilitating wider SAF adoption. As documented in Categories 3 and 4, existing HEFA refining assets and infrastructure can be used to produce both advanced biofuels (from biomass-derived and fermentation-derived triglycerides) and e-fuels (from thermochemical triglycerides made with non-biogenic CO2 and green hydrogen), potentially at lower cost than building standalone ATJ, FT, or e-SAF facilities from scratch. The stronger the business case of each pathway, the higher the likelihood of its success, and honestly, no pathway should require the struggles of another to stand up. The industry advances fastest when every category, pathway, technology, producer is successful. In the end, the most efficient path forward will likely use existing resources, existing capacity, and existing commercially de-risked infrastructure wherever possible, rather than treating the feedstock constraint as a reason to abandon what has already been built.
The HEFA feedstock picture is wider than the current narrative reflects, and this article is an attempt to document that. Growing new oil feedstock supply across these four categories will require breeding programs, sustainability certification frameworks, conversion technology scale-up, supply chain buildout, and cross-sector collaboration between agricultural companies, energy incumbents, technology developers, and airlines.
The purpose of surfacing this topic is to shift the conversation, inviting the industry to explore, together, what this expanded feedstock landscape could look like as it scales. Based on what we can document today, the effort is underway and the question worth asking is not whether HEFA feedstock will run out, but what it will take, collectively, to make sure it does not.
Next in this series: ATJ feedstock and the ethanol question, where the regulatory frame creates a different kind of trap, and where regional second-generation ethanol availability changes the calculus.
