Sustainable aviation fuel accounted for 2.79% of aviation fuel consumption across the European Union in 2025, according to figures released by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).

The number matters because it is the first full-year read on how the bloc's aviation sector is performing against the ReFuelEU Aviation mandate, which took effect on 1 January 2025 and requires fuel suppliers at Union airports to blend at least 2% SAF into the jet fuel they supply. A 2.79% share puts the industry above that starting threshold, with headroom of just under one percentage point.

The margin is thin when measured against the trajectory regulators have set. Under ReFuelEU Aviation, the blending obligation steps up to 6% SAF in 2030, then 20% in 2035, on a path that reaches 70% by mid-century. Moving from roughly 2.8% to 6% within five years requires a more than doubling of supply in a market where production capacity, feedstock availability and cost remain the binding constraints.

SAF currently costs a multiple of conventional jet fuel, and the gap flows directly into airline unit costs. Every percentage point of blending added under the mandate translates into incremental fuel expense that carriers must either absorb or pass through to fares, a calculation that weighs most heavily on short-haul operators in price-sensitive European markets. The 2025 figure therefore has network consequences as much as environmental ones: airlines facing higher fuel bills on thin routes have fewer options than carriers with premium long-haul traffic that can better carry the cost.

For fuel suppliers, the 2.79% share represents delivered volume against an obligation that applies at every EU airport above a traffic threshold, with exemptions for the smallest fields. The compliance burden sits with suppliers rather than airlines, but the cost incidence does not stay there; contract structures across the industry pass blending costs into delivered fuel prices.

EASA's publication of the figure also gives investors and lessors a data point they have lacked. Aircraft valuation models and fleet planning assumptions increasingly include carbon-compliance cost lines, and a verified EU-wide SAF share — as distinct from airline-level announcements and one-off corporate travel agreements — allows those models to be calibrated against actual market performance rather than pledges.

The distinction between mandate-driven consumption and voluntary demand is worth holding onto. Much of the SAF tonnage cited in airline sustainability reporting reflects book-and-claim arrangements and corporate offtake announcements that do not necessarily correspond to physical deliveries at EU airports. The EASA number, by contrast, measures fuel use within the regulatory perimeter, which makes it the benchmark against which both supplier compliance and airline decarbonisation claims will be checked.

Whether 2.79% becomes a floor from which supply scales, or a plateau that holds until new renewable-fuel plants reach final investment decision, depends on capacity additions now in the pipeline across Europe and on feedstock policy in Brussels. The 2030 step to 6% will be the first hard test.