MONTREAL — Air Canada has signed an agreement with Neste to purchase 77.6 million litres (20.5 million U.S. gallons) of Neste MY Sustainable Aviation Fuel as it continues to pursue its climate plans and aspirations.

Air Canada’s President and CEO, Michael Rousseau said: “Air Canada is actively pursuing efforts to mitigate its greenhouse gas emissions and SAF is a critical component of our multifaceted approach to reducing our impact on the environment and promoting environmental sustainability in our operations. This SAF purchase from Neste contributes significantly to our target of procuring SAF for one per cent of our estimated jet fuel use in 2025.”

“While Air Canada and the Canadian aviation industry will continue to depend on imported SAF, SAF must also become available at scale in Canada to achieve our long-term aspirational goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This is why we at Air Canada are asking federal and provincial governments to play a role and support the development of a competitive SAF industry and production market in Canada,” he said.

Neste, one of the world’s leading producers of SAF, will deliver the neat SAF purchased in a blended form to the Vancouver marine terminal starting next month, with further shipments throughout 2025.

This purchase represents Air Canada’s first commercial import of SAF into Canada.

Rousseau noted that although some additional capacity is coming online, the current global SAF supply remains very limited and costly, and can only satisfy a very small fraction of worldwide demand.

In 2024 IATA announced that even a tripling of SAF production in 2024 would still only account for 0.53% of aviation’s total fuel requirements in 2024.

Air Canada along with other major Canadian companies, has been engaged with governments in Canada to advance the availability of SAF and encourage support for the development of a cost-competitive Canadian-made supply of SAF for commercial aviation.

Rousseau said Air Canada continues to work towards its long-term aspirational goal of net-zero GHG emissions from all its global operations by 2050, and its absolute midterm GHG net reduction targets by 2030 for both its air and ground operations, compared to its 2019 baseline.

Through Air Canada’s Leave Less Travel Program, corporate customers and cargo freight forwarders can purchase scope 3 environmental attributes associated with SAF, carbon offsets or a combination of both related to their own business air travel or cargo shipments on Air Canada.