Alternative Land-Use Impacts of the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Grand Challenge: Corn Ethanol vs. Soybean Oil Pathways

Key Points The Biden administration, with bipartisan support, has set a goal of increasing sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production from 16 million gallons today to three billion gallons by 2030. Producing three billion gallons of sustainable aviation fuel would require the use of between eight and 11 million acres of corn or 35 and 50 million acres of soybeans, depending on how rapidly crop yields increase over the next six years. Corn ethanol appears to minimize the land-use impacts of meeting the administration’s SAF goal using agricultural feedstock, but possible emissions from land-use change create substantial uncertainty about the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural-feedstock SAF. Read the PDF.