Remote Regions, Coastal Waters, Sustainable Aviation Fuel, Nuclear Energy, Amphibious Aircraft, Turbines, and Arctic Sovereignty.
Introduction: Why SAF Matters Most at the Edge of the Map
When most people think about sustainable aviation fuel, they picture wide-body airliners taxiing away from gleaming terminals at Heathrow or Toronto. But the decarbonization of Canadian aviation is equally important—and the economic and strategic reasons for it are strongest—not at the world’s major hubs, but at the outermost regions of the map where Canadian sovereignty begins.
For aircraft and helicopters, the lifeline of northern communities, powered by Pratt & Whitney Canada’s renowned PT6A family of turboprop engines, operating in Canada’s remote northern and coastal regions, sustainable fuel signifies both an inevitable regulatory requirement and a transformative opportunity. The question is no longer whether the turbine-powered fleet serving the world’s remote communities will transition to low-carbon fuels. The question is when, how, and, critically, who will supply it where it matters most.
This article explores the current state of sustainable jet fuel production technology, examines the specific compatibility of SAF with aircraft turbine engines surveys the companies best positioned to produce it, makes the case for a dual-track Canadian strategy — one pathway rooted in the biomass resources of the south, and a second, equally compelling pathway rooted in the wind, water, and nuclear potential of the North — and explains why an innovative Canadian company called Aeon Blue may hold the most important piece of the northern puzzle. This article is also written for investors and entrepreneurs: establishing a SAF production facility in Canada is not a distant ambition. It is a near-term industrial opportunity with strong policy tailwinds, an urgent buyer market, and a rapidly maturing technology landscape.
The Cost of Fuel at the End of the Road — and Beyond It
Before discussing how to produce sustainable fuel in Canada’s North, it is worth pausing to understand just how broken the current system is, and what is actually at stake economically for the communities that depend on it.
Consider the airports that bookend the Canadian Arctic and sub-Arctic: Happy Valley-Goose Bay (CYYR) in Labrador, Churchill (CYYQ) in Manitoba, Iqaluit (CYFB), Coral Harbour (CYZS), Rankin Inlet (CYRT), Chesterfield Inlet (CYCS), Baker Lake (CYBK), Taloyoak (CYYH), Gjoa Haven (CYHK), Cambridge Bay (CYCB), and Kugluktuk (CYCO) in Nunavut, and Sachs Harbour (CYSY), Paukatyk (CYPC), Tuktoyaktuk (CYUB), and Inuvik (CYEV) in the Northwest Territories, and the remarkable High Arctic outpost of Eureka (CYEU) on Ellesmere Island, one of the most isolated airstrips on Earth. These airports are not curiosities on the aviation map. They are the lifeline infrastructure of dozens of predominantly Indigenous communities, served almost entirely by turbine-powered aircraft operating on fuel flown or shipped in from thousands of kilometres away. These outposts are also the bulwark of Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic.
The economics of supporting these communities are staggering. Retail Jet A-1 prices across communities in the Northwest Territories currently reach as high as $7.07 per litre — roughly four to five times the price paid at a southern Canadian airport. Despite governments spending approximately $300–400 million annually to subsidize the transport and use of diesel and jet fuel across Canada’s remote communities, people in those communities still pay six to ten times more for energy than the rest of the country. Every litre of Jet A-1 or diesel burned at Iqaluit or Cambridge Bay arrived there aboard a ship during the brief summer sealift window, or was flown in (bunkered) at even greater cost. The environmental risk posed by fuel spills from resupply vessels can damage Arctic ecosystems, with consequences that persist for decades. The supply chain is also fragile; a single season of poor sea-ice conditions, a storm, a logistical disruption, or a fuel supply disruption affecting an entire community can compromise the fuel supply for an entire year.
Canada’s remote communities collectively consume more than 90 million litres of diesel fuel every year for electricity generation alone, before adding aviation fuel. The annual cost, the environmental liability, and the energy insecurity this represents constitute one of the most compelling arguments for domestic northern energy production in Canada’s history — and SAF production is at the heart of a solution that addresses all three problems simultaneously.
What Is SAF, and Why Does It Matter?
Sustainable Aviation Fuel is, at its most basic, a drop-in replacement for conventional Jet A-1 kerosene, produced from renewable or waste-derived feedstocks rather than from petroleum refining. To be practical and yet proactive, the critical technical requirement is that SAF must be functionally identical to fossil kerosene in its combustion properties, energy density, viscosity, lubricity, and storage behaviour, and must work in existing engines, fuel systems, and airport infrastructure without modification. This is what aviation regulators mean when they refer to SAF as a “drop-in” fuel. It does not require new engines, new fuel tanks, or new distribution trucks. The aircraft doesn’t know the difference.
How SAF Actually Reduces Carbon Emissions
The turbine engine itself doesn’t care what it burns — combustion is combustion, and a PT6A running on SAF still produces CO₂ at the exhaust. The environmental case for SAF rests entirely on lifecycle carbon accounting, not on combustion chemistry itself. If a turbine engine burning SAF still produces carbon dioxide at the exhaust stack, how does SAF actually reduce emissions?
The answer lies not in what happens at the combustion chamber, but in what happened before the fuel ever reached the aircraft. Aviation’s carbon problem is fundamentally one of new carbon — fossil fuels extract carbon that has been locked underground for millions of years and release it into the atmosphere as CO₂ for the first time, permanently increasing the atmospheric burden. SAF breaks this one-way flow by operating on a closed — or near-closed — carbon cycle.
In a biofuel pathway, the plants grown for feedstock absorbed CO₂ from the atmosphere during their lifetime; when that fuel is burned, it releases the same carbon back, resulting in a net addition close to zero. In a Power-to-Liquid synthetic pathway, the CO₂ used to synthesize the fuel is captured directly from industrial emissions or from the air itself before the fuel is ever made. So again, combustion simply returns carbon that was already in the atmosphere rather than adding ancient fossil carbon to it.
“SAF is not a zero-emission technology in the absolute sense — it is not hydrogen, and it is not electric…”
Green energy is the master key: if the electricity powering electrolysis and chemical synthesis comes from a renewable source, there is no fossil carbon input anywhere in the production chain, and the lifecycle carbon intensity of the resulting fuel can be as low as 10–20% of that of conventional Jet-A. Beyond the carbon cycle itself, there are two additional benefits of emissions worth noting. SAF produced through HEFA or Fischer-Tropsch synthesis contains virtually no sulphur and significantly fewer aromatic compounds than fossil kerosene, which reduces the formation of sulphate aerosols and fine particulate matter — both contributors to the non-CO₂ climate forcing effects of aviation, now understood to roughly double aviation’s effective climate impact beyond CO₂ alone. Contrail formation, which depends in part on soot particle nucleation from combustion, is also meaningfully reduced when burning clean paraffinic fuels. SAF is not a zero-emission technology in the absolute sense — it is not hydrogen, and it is not electric — but it is the only solution currently available that addresses the full atmospheric footprint of a turbine engine burning liquid hydrocarbon fuel, across both the greenhouse gas and the non-CO₂ climate forcing dimensions, while remaining completely compatible with every existing aircraft, engine, and airport in the world. en, and it is not electric — but it is the only solution currently available that addresses the full atmospheric footprint of a turbine engine burning liquid hydrocarbon fuel, across both the greenhouse gas and the non-CO₂ climate forcing dimensions, while remaining completely compatible with every existing aircraft, engine, and airport in the world.
The Production Pathways: Biofuels and Synthetic Fuels Explained
Eleven biofuel production pathways are currently certified to produce SAF, and, by IATA’s own analysis, SAF could contribute around 65% of the emissions reductions needed by aviation to reach net-zero CO₂ by 2050 — requiring a massive scale-up in production to meet that demand. The ICAO’s CORSIA scheme and the EU’s ReFuelEU Aviation mandate, which came into force in January 2025, are now compelling airlines and fuel suppliers to move from aspiration to commercial-scale production.
Global SAF-supplied volumes doubled to approximately 1 million tonnes in 2024, compared with 2023 levels, and projected global demand could reach over 15 million tonnes by 2030. Nearly 82% of current SAF capacity relies on a single technology — HEFA (Hydroprocessed Esters and Fatty Acids) — which is limited by available feedstocks. Diversifying beyond HEFA into synthetic and Power-to-Liquid (PtL) pathways is the critical next step. There are two broad families of SAF: biofuels derived from biological feedstocks, and synthetic fuels manufactured through chemical processes. Both are ASTM-approved at varying blend ratios.
HEFA — Hydroprocessed Esters and Fatty Acids
HEFA is today’s dominant commercial pathway. It takes lipid-based feedstocks — used cooking oil, animal fats, tallow, camelina oil, jatropha, and other fatty acids — and hydroprocesses them (essentially treating them with hydrogen under pressure and heat) to crack them into paraffinic hydrocarbons that match jet fuel specifications. HEFA-SPK (Synthetic Paraffinic Kerosene) can currently be blended with conventional Jet-A up to 50%. It is produced by companies like Neste (Finland/Singapore), World Energy (USA), Diamond Green Diesel (USA/Valero/Darling), Phillips 66, and Montana Renewables. HEFA is the right technology for southern Canada, where canola, tallow, and waste cooking oil are plentiful. It is not a meaningful option for the High Arctic, where no oilseed crop grows, and biomass of any kind is vanishingly scarce. That distinction — biomass-rich south, biomass-poor North — is the fundamental reason why a two-track Canadian SAF strategy is not just sensible, but essential.
Alcohol-to-Jet Fuel (AtJ)
The Alcohol-to-Jet Fuel pathway converts fermentation-derived alcohols — typically ethanol from corn or sugar cane, or isobutanol — into jet fuel hydrocarbons through dehydration, oligomerization, and hydroprocessing. It is ASTM-approved for blends up to 50%. Companies advancing AtJ include Gevo (an isobutanol pathway in the USA) and LanzaTech (which captures industrial waste gases, ferments them into alcohols, and then converts them to jet fuel). AtJ is particularly interesting for Saskatchewan and Manitoba, where an existing agricultural ethanol base provides ready feedstock — and where the resulting SAF could supply regional carriers serving the northern communities that currently import every drop of their fuel, thus decentralizing the supply chain.
Fischer-Tropsch Synthetic Paraffinic Kerosene (FT-SPK)
Fischer-Tropsch is a century-old chemical process — originally developed in Germany in the 1920s — that converts synthesis gas (syngas: a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide) into long-chain hydrocarbons, which are refined into jet fuel, diesel, and naphtha. Syngas can be derived from biomass gasification, municipal solid waste, industrial waste gases, or CO₂ and green hydrogen (a fully synthetic e-fuel). FT-SPK is approved for blends up to 50%, and FT-SPK/A (with added aromatics) up to 50%. This pathway is the backbone of the Power-to-Liquid concept and is where nuclear energy integration becomes most compelling. Companies active in FT-SPK include Shell, Sasol (South Africa), Velocys (UK), INERATEC (Germany), and Carbon Engineering (now part of Occidental Petroleum, with operations in British Columbia).
Power-to-Liquid (PtL) E-Fuels — The Synthetic Future, and the Arctic Opportunity
PtL is the process of making jet fuel from electricity, water, and CO₂ alone — with no biological feedstock required whatsoever. The sequence is: (1) electrolysis splits water into hydrogen and oxygen using electrical power; (2) CO₂ is captured from the atmosphere or from industrial point sources; (3) hydrogen and CO₂ are combined in a reverse water-gas shift reaction to make syngas; (4) the syngas is converted to jet fuel via Fischer-Tropsch synthesis; and (5) the resulting synthetic kerosene is hydroprocessed and blended. The result is a fuel whose lifecycle carbon footprint approaches zero, because the carbon in the fuel was captured from the air to begin with and simply returns to the atmosphere on combustion — a closed carbon cycle. In fact, one of the processes captures and stores up to 600% more CO2 than is emitted into the fuel.
The problem with PtL at present is cost and energy intensity. Electrolysis is energy-hungry, and the electricity to run it must be both abundant and cheap enough to make the resulting fuel economically competitive. This is exactly where the Arctic and the sub-Arctic flip from liability to advantage — because the energy resources of Canada’s North, harnessed correctly, are among the most powerful on the planet.
SAF and the Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A Family
The question that matters most to current aircraft operators is a simple one: Can you actually put this stuff in your engine? The answer, as of 2025, is a clear and documented yes.
All Pratt & Whitney engines are currently approved to operate with SAF at blends of up to 50% with standard Jet-A kerosene. Pratt & Whitney has been actively involved in SAF testing and certification for decades and helped regulators define the technical standards that enable multiple different SAF blends to be used today. Pratt & Whitney Canada engines have been 50% SAF compatible since the late 2000s. This applies across the entire PT6A family — the PT6A-114A in the Cessna Caravan 208, the PT6A-27 and -34 in DHC-6 Twin Otter variants, the PT6A-67 in the AT-802, Fire Boss, and PC-12, and the newer PT6A-140A powering the Cessna Grand Caravan EX — all approved for 50% SAF blends under ASTM D7566 specifications. The certification roadmap for 100% SAF (also known as “neat SAF”) is being actively pursued, and the industry expects full approval within this decade.
There is a subtle but important engineering reason why turbine engines actually tolerate SAF better than aviation piston engines. The combustor chamber of a PT6A is essentially a furnace that will burn virtually any hydrocarbon with appropriate energy density and viscosity. Unlike Doc’s “Mr. Fusion” bolted to the back of his DeLorean, which cheerfully digested beer cans and leftover pizza, turbine engines require a fuel that atomizes properly through its nozzles, resists coking and deposits on the hot section, and meets lubricity standards to protect the fuel control unit.
SAF produced through HEFA or FT pathways is, if anything, cleaner-burning than fossil Jet-A, producing fewer particulates and less sulphur, with positive implications for hot-section longevity. The one property that SAF typically lacks is aromatic content — aromatics swell and help seat elastomer seals and O-rings in fuel systems. Pure HEFA or FT kerosene, being almost entirely paraffinic, has very low aromatic content, but blended at 50% with conventional Jet-A, this is not an issue. For 100% SAF, a small quantity of synthetic aromatics must be added, which is technically straightforward and already part of the ASTM D4054 certification process. What this means practically: a 50/50 blend of certified SAF with conventional Jet-A can go directly into the tanks of your PT6A-powered Caravan or Twin Otter today, with no modifications, no supplemental type certificates, and no operational limitations beyond standard fuel quality protocols.
Canadian SAF Producers — Who Is Making It
The SAF production landscape has expanded dramatically since 2021. The following are key commercial-scale producers and technology developers relevant to the Canadian market.
Neste (Finland): The world’s largest dedicated SAF producer, operating refineries in Singapore, Rotterdam, and Finland. Already supplying Air Canada under a 77.6-million-litre agreement beginning late 2024. The benchmark commercial producer globally.
SAF+ Consortium (Canada): The Montreal-based consortium — backed by Hydro-Québec, Air Transat, Aéroports de Montréal, Polytechnique Montréal, and Airbus — is Canada’s leading PtL SAF developer, having produced some of the first PtL synthetic aviation fuel in North America at its pilot plant near Montreal.
— directly applicable to remote or distributed SAF production in northern settings.
Carbon Engineering / 1PointFive / Occidental (Canada/USA): Developing Direct Air Capture facilities in British Columbia and Texas that capture atmospheric CO₂ for use in PtL SAF synthesis.
Azure Sustainable Fuels (Canada): Developing a renewable fuel production facility in Canada targeting approximately one billion litres of predominantly SAF per year, with first production targeted for 2027.
Aeon Blue (Canada): A pioneering Canadian eFuel company whose technology is arguably the most strategically relevant of any on this list for Canada’s Arctic and remote coastal regions — discussed in detail in the section that follows.
Continue with: Canada’s Two-Track SAF Strategy: Biomass in the South, Wind and Water in the North
