Sustainable aviation fuel accounted for more than 2% of jet fuel consumed at European Union airports in 2025, exceeding the bloc's first mandatory blending target, according to the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).

The 2% figure marks the opening milestone of the ReFuelEU Aviation regulation, which took effect on 1 January 2025 and requires fuel suppliers at Union airports to include a minimum share of SAF in the aviation fuel they distribute. The 2025 compliance year is the first in which the obligation has bound suppliers, making the reported outcome the first hard datapoint on Europe's decarbonisation of jet fuel supply.

Under the regulation, the blending mandate steps up on a fixed schedule. Suppliers must meet 6% SAF content from 2030, rising to 20% in 2035, with further increases through mid-century. The 2025 threshold of 2% was set deliberately low to allow production capacity and logistics chains to ramp up.

For airlines operating in Europe, the outcome carries direct cost implications. SAF currently trades at a multiple of conventional Jet A, and the mandate functions as a de facto fuel-cost adder passed through the supply chain. Every percentage point of blended fuel adds to carriers' expenditure at a time when fuel remains the largest single operating cost for most European network airlines.

The 2% figure also signals something about supply. Meeting the mandate required actual production and delivery of certified SAF volumes into EU airport fuel systems — not commitments or memoranda of understanding. That real fuel reached the fleet in the first compliance year indicates the upstream production and distribution chain, however immature, is functioning at the scale the regulation's first step demanded.

EASA's role in the reporting architecture matters for how the figure should be read. The agency collects and verifies SAF data under the Union's monitoring framework, which means the reported usage is grounded in supplier declarations and compliance reporting rather than industry estimates. The 2%-plus figure is therefore a regulatory datapoint, not a promotional one, and it will form the baseline against which the steeper 2030 and 2035 requirements are measured.

The margin above the target was not quantified in the initial report, and the composition of the blended fuel — how it split among approved pathways such as hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids (HEFA), alcohol-to-jet and other certified routes — will determine how replicable the result is as the mandate tightens. HEFA feedstocks remain the dominant pathway globally, and capacity constraints in that segment are widely documented across the industry.

The stakes rise sharply from here. Moving from 2% to 6% by 2030 implies a tripling of SAF supply into EU airports within five years, and the step to 20% five years later implies an order-of-magnitude build-out of production capacity across the continent. Whether announced refinery conversions and new-build plants reach final investment decision and commissioning on that timeline is the central uncertainty in European aviation fuel policy.

Airlines and lessors are already pricing the trajectory into fleet and network planning, with fuel burn performance carrying growing weight in aircraft selection decisions. Regulators, for their part, now have a verified first-year baseline: the mandate was met, and the next test arrives with the 2030 step-up.