A CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) on Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) has been published and is available for free download on the CEN and CENELEC website.
Through this initiative, CEN and CENELEC demonstrate their long-term commitment to supporting EU climate and energy strategies by providing a robust standardization basis for sustainable aviation.
This work is an important step to raise awareness about SAF and its sustainability benefits. It contributes to improving the logistics chain for green fuels and enhances the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of SAF use. These efforts are essential to scaling up SAF adoption and thereby facilitating the green transition of European airports.
The CWA on Sustainable Aviation Fuel directly supports key EU legislation and strategies such as the European Green Deal, the Fit for 55 package, and the EU Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy, while aligning with the ReFuelEU Aviation Regulation that mandates the gradual uptake of SAF across European airports. It also contributes to the EU’s Climate Law, which sets the legally binding target of climate neutrality by 2050.
The CWA, initiated in the framework of the EU Horizon 2020 project ALIGHT, is the result of 12 months’ hard work by more than 40 dedicated European and international experts and stakeholders across the aviation value chain, including fuel producers, distribution companies, aircraft industry, research institutions, NGOs and airports.
The SAF CWA offers a mapping of the current landscape of SAF, laying down terms and definitions, and outlining the EU regulatory context and sustainability benefits. It also provides an overview of relevant existing standards across the value chain from production to fueling, with reference standards for each sequence of the value chain. The SAF CWA aims to pave the way for the mapping of other e-fuels through a value chain approach with the identification of reference standards to ensure a robust implementation of these e-fuels. In this way, the CWA accelerates the efficient and cost-effective deployment of green fuels in aviation. This harmonized framework improves transparency, facilitates investment, and reduces barriers to scaling SAF, thereby enhancing Europe’s competitiveness, creating sustainable jobs, and delivering tangible progress toward a climate-neutral aviation sector.
Danish Standards has been the project lead and has facilitated the work together with chairperson Bernard Gindroz who also chairs the General Assembly of the EU Horizon 2020 project ALIGHT.
Copenhagen Airport as a European Lighthouse
The CEN Workshop Agreement also marks an important milestone in the ALIGHT project, as it aims to support the aviation sector in becoming carbon neutral by 2050. Here, Copenhagen Airport (CPH) serves as a “Lighthouse” airport, contributing concrete experiences and solutions that can be scaled to the rest of Europe.
The main results from the ALIGHT project will be published on October 1 at a concluding conference at Copenhagen Airport, where everyone is welcome. Register for the event at CPH (please note that this is a F2F event only).
