SAF Has Two Values. They Are Priced in Disconnected Markets.

If only one side of the value chain wins, the system does not scale.

In my last piece I argued we are comparing SAF to the wrong number. SAF is priced as a spread to gasoil futures, which means its market price tracks geopolitical volatility that has nothing to do with its actual production economics. While production side is decoupled from crude, the pricing side is not.

But even if we fix that comparison, we are still only seeing half the picture.

SAF has two distinct values. The first is its energy value: the physical fuel, priced in $/MT or $/gallon. The second is its sustainability value: the carbon intensity advantage over fossil jet, the lifecycle emissions reduction that is the primary reason SAF exists as a category. Both values are real. Both are priced. But they are priced in disconnected markets, governed by different industries, and the market that shapes how most people perceive SAF only sees one of them

The energy value is mainly governed by the aviation and fuel trading world: refiners, commodity desks, price reporting agencies, airline fuel procurement teams. The sustainability value is more appreciated by the ESG and compliance world: certification bodies, carbon registries, corporate sustainability teams, reporting frameworks etc. These communities have different infrastructure, different incentives, and in many cases, different language. And the energy landscape is the larger industry by far, with a longer historic period spanning the energy boom. When SAF enters the energy conversation and is discussed in energy market terms, it is compared to jet fuel on a pricing screen evaluated in a headline, with its core sustainability value or attribute absent from the number. The broader market defaults to an energy lens probably because that is the louder conversation, or has more liquidity and in that conversation, SAF will always look expensive.

Airlines and their sustainability teams tend to see both values. They creatively work through certificates, credits, and federal and state incentives to bridge the gap. But the perception that shapes how SAF is talked about, evaluated, and funded in the broader market is dominated by the energy framework, and that framework captures only half of what SAF delivers. The conversation keeps resetting to “SAF is too expensive” without accounting for why SAF exists in the first place. That is the structural challenge underneath the pricing problem.

Two markets, no bridge

Market 1 is the physical fuel market. It has real price reporters: Argus, S&P Global Commodity Insights, Quantum Commodity Intelligence, General Index all publish SAF assessments across regions and pathways. The liquidity is imperfect and the benchmarks are borrowed, but the infrastructure for price discovery exists.

Market 2 is the sustainability attribute market: book-and-claim certificates, SAF certificates (SAFc), LCFS credits, CORSIA-eligible attributes. This market has its own pricing, but no consolidated reporting, no standardized benchmarks, and no cross-platform integration. Platforms like RSB’s registry, RMI’s SAFc Registry, CADO, and Avelia each operate under their own framework, governance, and participant pool, among others. There is no shared settlement logic and no way to look across these platforms and see a market price for a SAF certificate at a given carbon intensity.

An e-fuels SAFc can trade at significant multiples of a HEFA SAFc delivering comparable lifecycle emissions reductions, not because the carbon value is different, but because the buyer pools are disconnected, have different incentives with limited to no arbitrage mechanism between platforms. This is more a willingness-to-pay fragmentation across disconnected platforms, rather than price discovery.

These two markets do not necessarily talk to each other. A change in sustainability attribute prices does not propagate to the physical fuel market in any visible way. When SAF and jet fuel are compared in the energy market context that dominates broader perception, the sustainability value is priced somewhere, but not in the same number. From the developer side, SAF project developers have noted that index-linked pricing for SAF as a standalone commodity has not yet matured to the level of fossil jet indices, and the current SAF indices do not reflect actual production costs. The infrastructure for price reporting exists, but it is still borrowing the fossil framework rather than reflecting SAF’s own economics.

The recognition gap

The fragmentation is compounded by an accounting problem upstream of every voluntary transaction. The GHG Protocol has not yet formally recognized book-and-claim SAF certificates for Scope 3 emissions reductions. SBTi has started signaling openness, allowing Environmental Attribute Certificates as a transitional tool. But GHG Protocol recognition remains outstanding.

Corporate buyers are the fastest-growing demand segment. DHL used 185 kilotonnes of SAF in 2025, 10% of its total fuel, nearly tripling from 2024. SABA facilitated the first-ever joint SAFc purchase. Amex GBT’s 2026 SAF Index projects corporate travel buyers could account for up to half of global SAF demand by 2030. The demand signal is real. But without GHG Protocol recognition, corporate buyers cannot confidently report their SAF purchases in climate disclosures. That suppresses demand, which suppresses liquidity, which suppresses the price signal that producers need.

The value of getting this right

The April 2026 CPI print came in at 3.8%, above forecasts, driven by energy costs. The gasoil benchmark that SAF is priced against is itself being structurally repriced by geopolitical premium. SAF’s feedstock costs did not drive that repricing, but SAF’s market price absorbed it anyway. Higher SAF prices could be seen as attractive for producers because wider margins should attract investment, and that logic makes sense in isolation. However, the SAF industry is an ecosystem, not a single-stakeholder industry. Airlines and dedicated SAF producers have been working together to make this market scale, function, and they are doing it by creatively striding across both the energy and sustainability markets in ways that the headline pricing frameworks cannot see. Look at what is actually happening on the ground.

Delta Air Lines anchored the Minnesota SAF Hub, a first-of-its-kind coalition that built a SAF blending facility, pipeline delivery to MSP, and a demand consortium with Bank of America, Deloitte, and Ecolab to purchase the first several million gallons annually. That is an airline co-constructing the supply chain from finance to farm to airport.

American Airlines submitted jointly with Infinium for SABA’s next-generation SAF procurement, agreeing to take physical delivery of e-fuels SAF and manage logistics while SABA’s corporate members purchase SAF certificates through book-and-claim. That is an airline providing the infrastructure backbone that connects a next-gen producer to corporate Scope 3 demand.

United Airlines, DSV - Global Transport and Logistics, Microsoft, and Phillips 66 secured 11 million gallons of SAF in one of the largest corporate agreements to date, stitching together a logistics company, a corporate buyer, a refiner, and an airline in a single deal.

Diamond Green Diesel is bringing neat SAF supply directly to Chicago Midway through Southwest Airlines’ hub infrastructure.

FedEx purchased 3 million gallons of SAF from Neste for express cargo delivery at LAX, covering roughly a fifth of its fuel consumption at the airport, while building B2B infrastructure that allows its cargo customers to claim Scope 3 reductions through SAFc procurement.

These are not passive fuel purchases. These airlines are building bespoke partnerships that bridge the energy value and the sustainability value, connecting dedicated producers, corporate buyers, blending infrastructure, and policy frameworks into structures that make SAF projects bankable. Furthermore, many of these offtake agreements sit on the balance sheets of airlines whose investment-grade credit is what unlocks the financing for many of these new project builds. That symbiotic collaboration is what has contributed to the advancement of the SAF market today, and none of it is visible in a headline $/MT comparison on an energy pricing screen.

When prices inflate beyond what production economics justify, it undermines the very stakeholders doing the most to build the industry. Airlines pull back on forward commitments. Lost airline capacity is also lost SAF volume. And when costs run high enough, it creates political pressure against mandates, because opponents can point to the burden and argue it is putting carriers at risk.

The UK government recently announced it will consult on making its SAF mandate more flexible to account for potential supply shortfalls, a real-time example of how uncertainty in the system creates pressure to ease the very policy frameworks the industry depends on. The goal is a price level that covers production costs, provides fair return on capital, and is sustainable enough for the demand side to grow. If only one side of the value chain wins, the system does not scale.

What could a functioning system look like?

In practice, that means a framework where the energy value and the sustainability value of a SAF purchase/cargo/trade show up in the same view. When an airline, a corporate buyer, or a project finance team evaluates SAF, they would see not just the $/MT headline tied to a gasoil spread, but also the certified carbon intensity value of that specific cargo, priced transparently and settled through interoperable infrastructure. The comparison to fossil jet would then reflect both dimensions: the energy cost and the sustainability benefit. This is the difference between a market that systematically undervalues SAF and one that gives it a fair starting position, and it is not a theoretical exercise.

Getting there requires movement on several fronts at once. Registries and platforms that currently price SAF certificates independently need shared governance and cross-platform settlement so that a certificate priced on one platform is visible and tradable across others. Price reporting agencies like Argus, S&P Global, Quantum Commodity Intelligence, and General Index already cover both the physical SAF market and elements of the sustainability attribute market, but in separate, disconnected reports with no integration between them. The energy value and the sustainability value sit side by side in different publications rather than stacked into a composite view that reflects both. What a combined energy-plus-sustainability value would look like operationally is an open question, but developing that composite view could be a starting point for giving the market a single number that reflects what SAF actually delivers.

GHG Protocol recognition of book-and-claim SAF certificates for Scope 3 reporting would unlock the corporate demand currently held back by accounting uncertainty. And policy frameworks like ReFuelEU are already creating the conditions for this: SkyNRG cited ReFuelEU as a key factor in reaching final investment decision on DSL-01, and is now advocating for a book-and-claim system that would allow airlines to contract SAF across EU member states rather than only from the supplier at their departure airport. That is a dedicated producer calling for exactly the kind of cross-border infrastructure that would begin connecting these two markets.

None of these steps alone is sufficient. But together they point toward a system where the full value of SAF is visible, comparable, and bankable in the same number. I do not know the exact design, and I am not sure anyone does yet. The people who would need to build it sit in different industries with different incentives and different definitions of value. That is a coordination challenge, but it is also an opportunity. The SAF market is still being shaped, and what it looks like five years from now will depend on decisions being made today by people across all of these communities.

The people designing SAF contracts, building registries, pricing SAF in their reporting, and setting corporate procurement policy should be the ones leading this conversation. What does an integrated framework look like from your side of the table?

Sources: Amex GBT 2026 SAF Index; DHL Group sustainability reporting; SABA procurement data; RSB Book & Claim Manual and interoperability research; Stillwater Associates (April 2026); CME Group ACCU futures; ASX Environmental Futures; Clean Energy Regulator (Australia); SBTi Corporate Net-Zero Standard updates; BLS CPI April 2026

Elvis Ebikade, PhD · Founder & Principal, Vansam Advisory

Elvis Ebikade, PhD is Founder and Principal of Vansam Advisory, an independent SAF commercial-strategy firm that translates technology and technical work into the commercial case for cost, carbon intensity, offtake, and capital.

The question is straightforward: how do we connect these two pricing systems so that both values of SAF are visible in the same place where procurement decisions and market perceptions are shaped?