Sustainable aviation fuel: The future of low-carbon flight

Blended into the fuel is sustainable aviation fuel, made from waste and residues rather than fossil oil. It burns cleaner, delivers around 80 percent lower lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions, and represents aviation’s most realistic path to decarbonization. And yet despite its environmental credentials, SAF is still a scarce commodity compared to the ubiquitous use of conventional jet fuel.

In 2025, SAF accounted for just 0.6 percent of global aviation fuel supply, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA). And yet, on this apron in Leipzig - and at airports from San Francisco to Singapore – it is already powering commercial flight.

That contradiction sits at the heart of aviation’s decarbonization challenge: How do you scale a fuel that’s still in very short supply?

Our answer at DHL has been to treat SAF not as a future experiment, but as a present-day operating input. So how have we deployed SAF in 2025 – and to what impact? Let’s take a look at the numbers: 

The volume of SAF used matters far beyond our own footprint. In a market where supply is the bottleneck, demand really helps to shape investment decisions.

“It’s also important to remember that making aviation fully electric is not physically possible for longer flights with larger weights,” says Mündel, “which means SAF is the most important and prominent commercially available lever to decarbonize long-haul flights.”

What does “scale” mean in practice? To help explain it, we’ve published a new “SAF Around the World” map, a snapshot of where we uplift SAF today in the DHL Express network, and have agreements for new uplift in place. 

In 2025, SAF was deployed across 17 airports globally, spanning Europe, Asia, and North America. These include Leipzig, Amsterdam, London Heathrow, Singapore, Tokyo Narita, Los Angeles, and New York JFK. This widespread use marks a shift to a scalable, multi-regional SAF operating model within global aviation. More sites are planned to come onboard in 2026.

Unlike pilot projects limited to a single hub, this shift is an attempt to apply SAF using a logic tailor-made to our logistics network: multiregional and contractually stable. “This map isn’t a marketing gimmick,” says Tim Lederer, Vice President, Global Aviation Regulatory Affairs and Fuel at DHL Express. “It shows that SAF is shifting from isolated trials to a global operating model.”

The challenge behind scaling SAF isn’t primarily the technology involved – it’s the value chain between the supplier and customers, and DHL's customers.

“You need long-term offtake agreements, regional diversification, and the ability to operate across different regulatory systems,” says Lederer. “That’s where logistics companies like ours play a unique role.”

In 2025, we sourced SAF from 10 suppliers, all certified under best-in-class sustainability standards in the market. Most recently, DHL Express signed a landmark offtake agreement with Dubai-based next generation SAF developer SAF One, bringing the first SAF production facility in the Middle East into DHL’s global SAF supply network. Express will receive long term access to 25,000 metric tons of unblended SAF per year – a total of 250,000 metric tons over a ten-year term from start of production, planned from 2028. 

“When a new SAF plant is being planned, DHL is often one of the first calls producers make,” Lederer says. “Our commitments make projects bankable.”

Demand for alternative jet fuel isn’t coming only from regulators or airlines and their customers – it’s being pulled through the whole value chain.

In 2025, nearly 30 percent of DHL Express shipment volume moved via GoGreen Plus*, a DHL product that allows customers to reduce Scope 3 emissions using verified book-and-claim SAF insetting.

In April 2026, Express announced a five-year expansion of its SAF collaboration with IAG Cargo. The new agreement, together with a previous 2025 renewal, will enable approximately 240 million liters of SAF uplifted at London Heathrow Airport and reduce the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of DHL Express cargo transported on British Airways flights. 

For Google, which ships consumer devices globally, the use of DHL’s GoGreen Plus service means SAF is now being applied across key international air‑cargo flows.

"Optimizing how we transport Google devices around the world is a key part of our net-zero-emissions journey," says Omar Molina, Director of Global Transportation at Google. "That's why we're thrilled to collaborate with partners like DHL. SAF is a big step forward."

Alexion is taking a similar approach. In December 2025 it became the first company in Ireland to sign up to a 100% switch from traditional aviation fuel to SAF for international air delivery of its medicines "Through our partnership with DHL Express we've signed up immediately to a 100% change in fuel, rather than scaling up over time, which demonstrates how seriously we take environmental stewardship,” says Sylvia Kiely, Vice President, Global Supply Chain and Product Strategy Lead, Alexion, AstraZeneca Rare Disease.

What makes these programs viable at scale is flexibility. Emissions reductions are tracked, verified, and allocated without requiring physical SAF on every single route.

With sustainable aviation fuel supplies still constrained, market concentration and demand signals play a critical role in scaling production. By consuming more than 10% of global SAF production, DHL helps stabilize SAF demand and accelerate new SAF supply coming online.

This demand signal is further reinforced by aviation regulation in the EU and UK, including mandatory SAF blending requirements under frameworks such as the ReFuelEU Aviation Regulation, which are reshaping global fuel markets.

“When we buy SAF, we’re not just reducing our own emissions,” Lederer says. “We’re telling the market this transition is happening.”

Our goal is to have a 30 percent SAF share by 2030 – ambitious but grounded in concrete operational and procurement planning.

If SAF succeeds, it will do more than decarbonize aviation. It could create an entirely new global fuel commodity – produced, traded, and routed through logistics systems not unlike the ones that already move goods across borders.

Back in Leipzig, the refueling hoses are disconnected. The aircraft pushes back. Nothing about its departure looks exceptional.

And yet, with each SAF powered takeoff, the future of low-carbon flight becomes a little less abstract, built not in theory but liter by liter, and airport by airport.   

* GoGreen Plus is a value-added service to a DHL shipment contributing to decarbonization measures within DHL’s logistics network. By using alternative fuels and/or technologies DHL reduces the usage of fossil fuels in the mode of transport used for the GoGreen Plus shipment. This does not necessarily mean that the specific shipment is physically transported with the assets using these fuels or technologies. Further information, e.g. on concrete decarbonization measures is available on our DHL Group website