Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Boeing, others up SAF plans in Washington State
Credit: Boeing.
Announced on Thursday at Boeing Future of Flight, the museum located adjacent to Boeing’s Everett production facility, the Cascadia Sustainable Aviation Accelerator (CSAA) aims to ramp the region’s SAF production capacity to one billion gallons per year by 2035.
CSAA has so far raised $20 million for the initiative; it received $10 million in Washington state appropriations in 2025, which was matched by a $10 million philanthropic donation. According to CSAA, it is the most comprehensive and well-funded SAF initiative in the region.
Boeing is one of the founding partners of the CSAA, alongside Alaska Airlines, Earth Finance, Snohomish County, the Port of Seattle, Microsoft, Washington State University, Amazon, and the Washington Department of Commerce.
The full story may be read on LNA’s media partner AIN.
I have yet to see a viable SAF. Costly and not anywhere near enough to make any difference.
It would help to have the figures of how much Jet Fuel is used in the US and what a billion gallons means.
I am not against it, but to be viable would require a mandate.
It shouldn’t be too hard to come up with a rough estimate of how far a billion gallons would stretch – assume a US gallon of kerosene weighs 8lb and there are 2000lb in a ton: That makes 125 gallons/ton, and therefore 1 billion gallons works out at around 8000tons of fuel – not an insignificant amount, but I doubt if it’ would be enough to keep a even a single commercial airport going. I might have got my numbers wrong, of course, please correct me if I have!
The real, far more important, question, of course, is what the feedstock for producing this fuel will be, there doesn’t seem to be much point doing it if it means diverting land currently used for food production to fuel-yielding crops.