As global oil prices rocket due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, traditional jet fuel has become hard to come by and has nearly doubled in price, leading airlines across much of the world to raise ticket prices or cancel flights.

While greener fuels produced from plants or green hydrogen remain more expensive, the cost gap has narrowed and experts told Climate Home News that this could boost demand in the struggling sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) industry.

Matt Ridley, sustainability and innovation director at the OneWorld airline alliance told Climate Home News that “higher jet fuel prices narrow the green premium, reinforcing the role of SAF in cutting lifecycle emissions while reducing exposure to volatile fossil fuel markets.”

Marie Owens Thomsen, chief economist and sustainability lead at the International Air Transport Association (IATA), a trade group for airlines, said the world is currently seeing “the highest jet fuel prices that we’ve ever had in the history of jet travel”.

The problem predates the war but has been worsened by it, she said, adding that as demand for oil-based products like diesel has declined because of the electrification of road transport, many of the oil refineries that produce jet fuel were struggling to make a profit.

The crisis could “wake people up” to the problem of depending on “oil monopolies in the Middle East”, she said, adding that ramping up SAF production is critical for energy security.

“Khaki is the new green”

Some in the military sector seem to be taking note. Rheinmetall, a long-term supplier of the German air force, has partnered with a company called Ineratec which is developing technology to produce e-SAF based on hydrogen. And during the Biden administration, the US Department of Defense invested $65 million in an American e-SAF startup called Air Company.

Summing up the changing reasons for interest in SAF, Marcella Franchi from SAF producer Haffner Energy told the SAF Investor Summit in February that “khaki is the new green”. Speaking before the US bombed Iran, she gave the example of Canada, which she said is pursuing SAF production to avoid reliance on oil-based jet fuel from its “very unsettling neighbours”.

Since conflict has flared in the Middle East, Susan van Dyk, a former academic turned SAF consultant, told Climate Home News that a temporary narrowing of the cost gap is not, by itself, enough to make SAF take off. But the energy crisis may push governments to support SAF, she said.

The European Union and the UK have both mandated that, from January 2025, fuel suppliers at their airports must blend at least 2% SAF with oil-based kerosene. The blending requirement will gradually increase to reach 32% in the EU and 22% in the UK by 2040.

But, at least before the latest oil crisis, the EU and UK faced pressure from some airline and fossil fuel executives to water down these rules. The uncertainty these calls have created is damaging investment in production, SAF producers have said.

Book and claim

Speaking at the SAF Investor Conference in February, African airline executives and SAF producers said the design of the EU and UK mandates hinders non-European producers from contributing.

Under current rules, the SAF has to be physically delivered to planes at EU and UK airports to count towards the mandate, which favours SAF produced in or close to European airports – even though the raw materials to make it, such as waste oil, are often imported from regions like Southeast Asia.

Wakina Mutembei, Kenya Airways’ sustainability and innovations lead, told the conference that the EU and UK should adopt what is known as a book-and-claim system, where SAF supplied to planes outside of Europe can count towards a fuel supplier’s compliance with the EU and UK’s mandates.

This would be a “business opportunity”, she told the London audience, to use abundant Kenyan crops and used cooking oil and lower production costs “to produce SAF that is cheaper for the European market and the UK market”.

“If we are all complaining that the cost of SAF is higher, why not go to a market where it’s cheaper to produce it?” she asked, noting that this would create jobs in Africa and earn foreign currency.

Francis Mwangi, senior engineer at Kenya’s Civil Aviation Authority, told Climate Home News in an interview that if SAF is produced in Africa “you might find that, even relatively, the price might not be as far from the normal Jet A1 [oil-based jet fuel]”.

IATA’s Thomsen also called for a book-and-claim system, saying it “is definitely a way of making this teeny-tiny, bespoke, private-deal kind of market grow into a global market” by removing geographical constraints.

Shipping SAF long distances to be pumped into planes is inefficient, she said, adding that “without book and claim, this market will not scale”.

The post Oil crisis could boost struggling sustainable aviation fuel industry appeared first on Climate Home News.

Oil crisis could boost struggling sustainable aviation fuel industry

Harjeet Singh is a climate activist and strategic advisor to the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, as well as founding director of the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation.

For thirty years, global climate talks perfected policy paralysis around the primary cause of the climate crisis: fossil fuels. Within the UNFCCC negotiations, the “consensus card” was played with surgical precision by the fossil fuel industry and wealthy producer nations to block meaningful action.

For decades, talks were restricted to the “demand side” – reducing emissions – while the “supply side” – the extraction of oil, gas, and coal – was treated as a forbidden subject. This so-called progress was a treadmill, leading nowhere despite plenty of sweat.

The breaking point: from Belém to Santa Marta

The failure peaked at COP30 in Belém, where, despite widespread support, the final outcome contained no fossil fuel phase-out mandate. Instead, the world watched as the COP30 Presidency announced a “roadmap” initiative at the very end of the talks – a face-saving measure that lacked formal standing in the process.

The halls of Belém were once again crawling with lobbyists, ensuring that “consensus” remained a tool for delay. Recognising the UNFCCC logjam, Global South countries in the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative demanded a series of dedicated conferences.

Colombia, the biggest producer among them, broke the status quo by pioneering this new path: the First International Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, joined by the Netherlands as co-host.

The pioneering conference in Santa Marta in late April moved us from the “if” to the “how”, signalling a shift from airy pledges to the reality of implementation. But as the dust settles, a more ancient struggle is resurfacing: the struggle for the “pen”.

The invisible hand of control

History shows that when developed nations can no longer block a process, they attempt to colonise it. In Santa Marta, we witnessed the opening gambit of a familiar play – exclusion followed by takeover. Critics signalled this early on in an open letter, calling out the systemic disregard for African lives and environments in global policy and the persistent marginalisation of Indigenous Peoples’ voices and concerns.

Under the guise of “technical support”, wealthy nations fought to steer the outcome of workstreams towards Global North-dominated institutions. Despite the expertise they may bring, why are the recognised bodies for this process exclusively based in an area representing only 20% of the world’s population?

The hastily assembled report containing the “Chairs’ Takeaways” from Santa Marta requires scrutiny and raises the following concerns:

• The Roadmap Trap: Connecting national transition plans to the Science Panel on the Global Energy Transition (SPGET) and the NDC Partnership. These bodies, largely dominated by Western experts, risk imposing frameworks that treat sovereign developing nations as markets for the private sector. Will “science” be used to legitimise a Global North-centric status quo while ignoring debt, trade and finance rules, and other forces that shape national policy?

• The Financial Architecture: Pushing the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) to lead the work on macroeconomic dependencies on fossil fuels. Expertise matters, but whose stability is going to be prioritised? Is it the communities losing their livelihoods, or the global financial systems that grew fat on fossil fuel rents?

• The Trade Filter: Bringing the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) – a club of wealthy nations – into “producer–consumer alignment”. This is a coup to ensure the international trade system keeps serving the West and its elites under the guise of “coordination”.

The “dos and don’ts” for developed nations

For decades, the responsibility of rich nations to provide public finance for climate action in vulnerable countries has been replaced by private sector “leverage”. Developed nations must stop using “climate finance” as a tool to open new markets for their multinational corporations and put actual, grant-based finance on the table to support the transition in the Global South.

They should also refrain from forcing every initiative back into the UNFCCC gridlock, where meaningful progress on a fossil fuel phase-out has been systematically blocked.

Finally, it is critical that the Santa Marta process is recognised as a sovereign space for historically silenced nations to hold polluters accountable, rather than being treated as a showroom for Western exports.

This requires addressing the hypocrisy of so-called “front runners”. Canada, France, Ireland, Australia and Norway attend these conferences as “leaders” while greenlighting oil and gas expansion. You cannot lead a transition while pouring fuel on the fire. Leadership requires immediately ending expansion; anything else is an expensive photo-op.

Unity as the ultimate tool

For developing nations, the path forward is radical unity. Global North diplomacy often seeks to divide and conquer through bilateral deals that bypass collective power. Developing nations must refuse to be cowed.

This is a chance to move beyond tools that prioritise debt and trade over development. Collectively, the Global South can build technical and financial frameworks that advance energy sovereignty and justice. South-South cooperation must be the primary engine of a fair transition that holds historical polluters accountable.

The road to Tuvalu 2027 – reclaiming the agenda

The announcement that Tuvalu will co-host the second conference in 2027 is a political necessity. Tuvalu, a least developed country, is a living symbol of the climate crisis and a vanguard of justice.

Tuvalu must have the power to set the agenda from day one. This cannot be another “safe space” for dialogue without commitment, as seen at the first conference. The road to Tuvalu must advance a mechanism that gained wider support in Santa Marta but was ignored in the Chairs’ Takeaways: a Fossil Fuel Treaty.

We need a framework to manage the decline of fossil fuel extraction based on fair shares and equity, turning international cooperation into support for resilient, renewable economies.

The process has only just begun. Santa Marta was the spark, but Tuvalu must be the engine room of implementation. The Global South must take the pen to script the transition rooted in equity and justice.

The post Developing countries must hold the pen to script the fossil fuel transition appeared first on Climate Home News.

Developing countries must hold the pen to script the fossil fuel transition

Campaigners working to limit the use of controversial sun-dimming technology have praised the Europe’s foreign ministers for warning of the risks such technology poses, but opinions remain split over whether it merits more research, with the European Union keeping its position open for now.

At a joint council meeting in Luxembourg, ministers representing the EU’s 27 member states signed off on a statement agreeing for the first time that they were “concerned that large-scale climate interventions, in particular solar radiation modification (SRM), pose significant risks for the climate, the environment, security and geopolitics”.

Their statement, issued in late April, called for a moratorium on deployment of SRM technologies, as well as “the full application of the precautionary principle to geoengineering” and for the EU to engage in international talks on international governance arrangements, including those related to research.

SRM refers to any deliberate attempt to reduce the amount of heat which reaches the Earth from the sun. This could be carried out by artificially brightening clouds or injecting aerosols into the atmosphere, which could reduce or reverse global warming but risk severe and unpredictable side-effects.

The risks of carrying out SRM are widely acknowledged but climate campaigners and scientists remain divided on to what extent and how its effects should be researched, with some arguing that such work normalises it and encourages its deployment.

Experts on both sides of the debate welcomed the EU’s statement but made contrasting calls on what should happen next. A more pro-research group said the EU should encourage responsible research into SRM’s effects while more anti-research campaigners said the EU should prevent research that could lead to SRM’s deployment and agree not to use it.

Responsible research

Giulia Neri, the interim director of climate interventions at the Brussels-based think-tank Centre for Future Generations (CFG), which supports research into SRM, told Climate Home News that the EU’s statement sends “an important and timely signal on the need for rules governing SRM”.

She added that the fact it was issued by foreign – not climate – ministers shows “a growing recognition that SRM is a geopolitically relevant technology and not merely a climate-related issue”.

Her colleague, CFG adviser on climate interventions, Matthias Honneger added that the EU nations’ ministers in charge of research “might also consider how responsible public research under European oversight can help maintain Europe’s influence”.

This is especially important, Honneger said, as “private and global actors increasingly dominate what we know about this technology and its risks and benefits”.

A well-funded US-Israeli company Stardust claims to be developing the ability to carry out SRM and is seeking customers – including the US government – to pay for them to do so.

Impossible to test

Mary Chuch, who campaigns against geoengineering for the Center for International Environmental Law, also welcomed the foreign ministers’ statement.

She said it was right to emphasise “the risks of highly speculative geoengineering technologies, centre the precautionary principle and reinforce the longstanding moratorium under the Convention on Biological Diversity”.

How Shell is still benefiting from offloaded Niger Delta oil assets

But, rather than calling for more research, she and political scientist Frank Biermann called for the EU to join governments in Africa and the Pacific in calling for an international non-use agreement on solar geoengineering.

“As an immediate first step, the European Union must prevent research that could lead to the development and use of solar geoengineering technologies,” Biermann said.

Church said that solar geoengineering is “inherently unpredictable” and that it was “impossible to fully test for intended and unintended impacts without prolonged large-scale implementation”.

De facto moratorium

The council’s conclusion did not weigh in on the research debate, only resolving to engage in talks on the governance of research.

But European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation Ekaterina Zaharieva said in 2024 that research should continue although it should be “rigorous and ethical, and it must take full account of the possible range of direct and indirect effects”.

Also in 2024, the Swiss government attempted to get countries at the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) to set up an expert group on SRM. But this failed due to opposition from the African Group, Colombia, Mexico and others, and Switzerland did not try again at the last UNEA in December 2025.

SRM is currently legal in most nations. But there has been a de facto global moratorium in place on geoengineering – which includes SRM – since 2010, when it was agreed by governments under the Convention on Biological Diversity, with exceptions for small-scale scientific research studies.

The post EU warns on solar geoengineering but research debate grinds on appeared first on Climate Home News.

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