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New Energy World magazine logo
New Energy World magazine logo
ISSN 2753-7757 (Online)

Eni gears up to meet a third of European SAF demand

29/1/2025

News

Exterior shot of refinery Photo: Eni
Eni’s first plant to produce sustainable aviation fuel at the Gela biorefinery in Sicily has a capacity of 400,000 t/y

Photo: Eni

Eni has commissioned its first plant to produce sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) at the Gela biorefinery in Sicily. The plant has a capacity of 400,000 t/y, representing almost a third of European SAF demand in 2025 based on Wood Mackenzie forecasts, following implementation of the European Union’s ReFuelEU Aviation regulation.

The ReFuelEU Aviation law requires aviation fuel providers to ensure that jet fuel supplied to aircraft operators at each airport in the EU contains a proportion of SAF. The required proportion of SAF will increase over five-year increments from a minimum of 2% from 1 January 2025 to 6% from 2030, 20% from 2035, 34% from 2040, 42% from 2045, and 70% from 2050.

 

Eni has signed agreements with several airlines for the supply of SAF since September 2022, based on initial production at the Gela biorefinery and other company facilities using waste-based feedstocks. The company plans to increase its biorefining capacity to over 5mn t/y by 2030 and ‘enhance optionality for SAF production’ to 1mn t/y by 2026, with further potential to double production by 2030. These targets will be supported by ongoing projects at the Venice biorefinery in Porto Marghera, expected to be operational next year, and the construction of new biorefineries in Malaysia and South Korea, which are due to be commissioned by 2030.

 

The Gela biorefinery has the capacity to process 736,000 t/y of biomass, which is primarily derived from waste and residual feedstocks such as used cooking oils, animal fat and by-products from vegetable oil processing. Eni reports that SAF production at Gela has been made possible by plant modifications, in particular to the isomerisation unit, which has been equipped with a reactor and a product separation section, as well as upgrades to the tank farm and logistics infrastructure. Improvements to the feedstock pretreatment section, including the construction of a third degumming line, are nearing completion, it adds. These will enable the further diversification of waste and residues feedstocks that can be converted into HVO (hydrotreated vegetable oil) biofuels, it says.