California-based Circularity Fuels this week completed the world’s first end-to-end conversion of raw agricultural biogas into sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).

Over a six-month pilot run on biogas drawn straight from a California dairy farm’s manure digester, Circularity produced drop-in jet fuel meeting ASTM D7566 Annex A1 specifications. The pilot puts commercial SAF within reach at <$100,000 per barrel-per-day of installed capacity at commercial scale, about one-fifth the capital cost of SAF plants currently under construction in Europe. The reduction in plant cost will make Circularity’s biogas-derived SAF cost-competitive with fossil jet fuel.

Jet fuel supply has come under growing pressure. International geopolitics has destabilized crude oil markets, and prices for airlines and fliers keep climbing. SAF offers a domestically produced alternative, but today’s global SAF production still meets less than 1% of demand. SAF production today is dominated by used cooking oil, which suffers from limited scale and doesn’t mitigate energy security risks given the majority of used cooking oil is imported from China. Advanced SAF proponents have touted e-Fuels as the solution, but rising power prices make power-to-liquid approaches economically challenging.

Circularity’s biogas jet fuel qualifies for federal and state biofuel incentives, including the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) pathway and the company expects to break ground on its first commercial site in 2027, targeting agricultural biogas resources across the United States, Latin America, and Europe.