(Posted 09th May 2026)

The Potential of Energy Crops

Energy crops can boost biomass availability while promoting positive environmental outcomes such as improved soil health, water quality, and biodiversity, as well as avoiding potential land-use-change issues. This is because non-food energy crops can be cultivated on low-quality degraded land. The successful uptake of energy crops could increase global feedstock availability for SAF production significantly. There could be as much as 800 Mt of additional global feedstock available annually by 2050 – making a substantial difference to global SAF production potential.

There is, however, uncertainty over how much additional feedstock would be available for SAF production, as other sectors too have similar needs for their decarbonization.

Nearly all regions have material scope to produce energy crops. These include different species ranging from the more established Carinata and Camelina, to lesser-known alternatives such as Macauba and Jatropha. Maximizing each region’s potential will be important to satisfy the projected global demand from all industries.

The potential can be limited by poor access to the areas of degraded and marginal land available for growing energy crops. A lack of technological solutions to make use of what land is available can also cap the potential, as can competing uses, including conserving biodiversity. These factors determine the region-specific ranges.

For energy crops to be used in CORSIA eligible fuel production, they must meet robust sustainability criteria. The harmonization of these criteria across competing sectors is necessary to ease barriers to their uptake, strengthen industrial value chains across technologies, and secure renewable fuel supply for air transport.