Could biofuels meet demand for global aviation?
To fuel all of the world’s aviation demand, global biofuels would need to more than triple and be exclusively used for air travel.
Most of the world’s liquid biofuels currently go into cars and trucks, not planes.
But how will this change in the future? Electric vehicles look like the leading decarbonization solution for road transport. Plummeting costs of batteries have made electric cars (and increasingly trucks) competitive with petrol and diesel ones.
The outlook for aviation is less clear. Short-haul flights might go electric. Long-haul ones will be more challenging to electrify (although some analysts remain optimistic).1 Hydrogen is one possible alternative to jet fuel, but it is still far from commercial scale.
Another option that gets a lot of attention is biofuels. A small amount of biofuels is already blended into jet fuel supplies in some countries. In 2023, Virgin Atlantic made headlines when it flew the first transatlantic flight powered entirely by biofuels. For many airlines, biofuels are currently the most practical decarbonization option.2
But how much biofuel does aviation actually use today? How much would be needed to replace fossil jet fuel — and could popular sources such as waste cooking oils ever meet that demand?
In this article, we put the key numbers into perspective.
Biofuels provide less than 1% of global aviation energy demand
Two statements summarize the current situation with biofuels and aviation today.
First, only a tiny share of global biofuel production is used for air travel — about 1% of it.3 Most is used for road transport.
Second, biofuels make up only a very small fraction of aviation fuel itself. We estimate around 0.4%.4
In other words, aviation still runs almost entirely on fossil jet fuel. Despite decades of innovation and discussions about moving to more sustainable options, the fuel mix has barely changed.
All of the world’s liquid biofuels could power just a fraction of the aviation fleet
Let’s imagine we went all-in on the electrification of road transport and biofuels were no longer needed for cars and trucks. Would the world’s biofuels power every plane instead?
The answer is no.
In 2024, the world produced an estimated 1,400 terawatt-hours (TWh) of energy in the form of liquid biofuels. The global aviation fleet consumed 3,932 TWh.5 That means we would need to almost triple global biofuel production to meet today’s demand.
This is in the most optimistic case. Reallocating all of the world’s bioethanol and biodiesel to aviation is not a one-to-one swap. Producing jet-equivalent fuel from bio-based inputs also yields non-jet co-products such as naphtha, fuel gas, or diesel, and involves conversion losses. Depending on the pathway, perhaps only 30% to 80% of it ends up as jet fuel. If we assume 50%, only around 700 TWh of energy would be available for aviation — enough to meet just one-sixth of today’s demand.
Keep in mind that at least 32 million hectares — a Germany-sized area of land — is already used to produce liquid biofuels. Based on the current mix of biofuel crops we grow, we’d need between three and six times the area of Germany.
But we’d also expect aviation demand to continue growing; how much will depend on trends in air travel demand and improvements in aircraft efficiency. In the past, efficiency gains have been impressive: the amount of fuel burned per passenger-kilometer has dropped by more than 60% since 1990.7
In a paper published in Nature Sustainability, Candelaria Bergero and colleagues modeled aviation energy demand in 2050 under different assumptions.8 They estimated that energy demand ranges from as little as 1,200 TWh in a scenario where plane efficiency improves dramatically, to 7,600 TWh in a “business-as-usual” scenario.9
In the business-as-usual case, biofuel production would need to increase five to tenfold to meet aviation demand with today’s fuel mix.10 Even in optimistic scenarios, aviation efficiency would need to improve at over four times the historical rate to make biofuels a dominant solution.
The aviation industry itself acknowledges this gap — particularly if biofuels are expected to carry the decarbonization burden alone, without alternatives such as hydrogen.11
Waste cooking oils and fats could only supply a small amount of the demand from aviation
One of the major drawbacks of biofuels produced from food crops is the amount of land they use. Growing fuel on fertile land has a high opportunity cost: that land could be used to produce food or freed up for nature to recover.
There is one biofuel source that avoids this problem: used cooking oils and fats. These are residues left behind, mostly from cooking vegetable oils and animal fats. Since these are waste, they are harnessing a resource that would otherwise need to be managed and disposed of.
Many early trials of aviation biofuels have relied on these waste sources. But could they ever supply a meaningful share of global aviation energy?
The amount of waste oils and fats generated worldwide is uncertain. In their recent Agricultural Outlook, the OECD and FAO estimated that global waste oils and fats production was around 25 million tonnes in 2023.12 Converted into aviation fuel, this could provide at most around 150 TWh of energy — just 4% of aviation demand today.13
This, however, represents an upper bound. It assumes all of the world’s waste oils are collected and processed, and that all of them are allocated to aviation.
Some sources suggest that global waste oil and fat production is slightly larger.14 But these differences would only increase its share of global aviation demand by a few percentage points. Using any of these estimates, the maximum is still likely to be well below 10%.
Waste oils can, therefore, make a small contribution to jet fuels. However, the majority would still have to come from elsewhere: biofuels from food crops, hydrogen, or electricity for shorter flights.
Biofuels might meet a small amount of aviation demand, but they won’t supply it all
This analysis aimed to put the numbers in perspective: how much biofuel aviation uses today, and what it would take to replace a substantial share of jet fuel in the future.
The conclusions are clear. It is extremely unlikely that the world could run the entire global aviation fleet on biofuels. With today’s crops and technologies — corn, sugar crops, vegetable oils, and waste oils — supply falls far short of demand. Global biofuel supply would need to almost triple, and all of it would need to be allocated to air travel.
Biofuels can contribute to decarbonizing aviation, but only to a limited extent. Any credible pathway to deep emissions cuts will need other technologies — such as hydrogen and electrification — to cover what biofuels cannot.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Max Roser and Edouard Mathieu for editorial feedback and comments on this article.
Putting solar panels on land used for biofuels would produce enough electricity for all cars and trucks to go electric
The world dedicates a Poland-sized area of land to liquid biofuels. Is there a more efficient way to generate energy?
Bioenergy and Biofuels
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Endnotes
Afonso, F., Sohst, M., Diogo, C. M., Rodrigues, S. S., Ferreira, A., Ribeiro, I., ... & Suleman, A. (2023). Strategies towards a more sustainable aviation: A systematic review. Progress in Aerospace Sciences.
Neste is just one example. It provides fuel from used cooking oil and animal fat waste, which can be blended into existing jet fuel supplies.
In 2024, the International Energy Agency estimated that 1.8 billion liters of liquid biofuel were for “biojet” fuel. Total production was 118 billion liters. That means biojet fuel was only 1%.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated that aviation energy demand in 2024 was 14.16 exajoules (EJ). That’s equivalent to 3,932 terawatt-hours (TWh).
We estimate that biofuels used for aviation are equivalent to around 17 TWh. The IEA estimates that 1.8 billion liters of biojet fuel were used in 2024. With an energy content of 34 MJ per litre, this is equivalent to 61 billion MJ (or 0.061 EJ). That is equivalent to 17 TWh.
17 TWh is 0.43% of the 3,930 TWh demand [17/ 3,930 = 0.43%].
This is very similar to figures reported by the International Air Transport Association (IATA). It reported that, “In 2024, SAF production reached 1Mt (1.250 billion liters), doubling the amounts produced in 2023, representing 0.3% of global jet fuel use.”
By 2025, the IATA expected that this could be 0.6% of global demand.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated that aviation energy demand in 2024 was 14.16 exajoules (EJ). That’s equivalent to 3,932 terawatt-hours (TWh).
These figures are also roughly in line with estimates published in a paper by Bergero et al. (2023). They projected that energy demand in 2025 would be 13.1 EJ, equivalent to 3642 TWh.
Dobruszkes, F., Mattioli, G., & Gozzoli, E. (2024). The elephant in the room: Long-haul air services and climate change. Journal of Transport Geography.
Bergero et al. (2023) report an energy intensity of 2.85 MJ per passenger-kilometer-equivalent in 1990. By 2021, this was 1.13 MJ. That’s a 60% reduction.
The data for the underlying paper can be found here.
Bergero, C., Gosnell, G., Gielen, D., Kang, S., Bazilian, M., & Davis, S. J. (2023). Pathways to net-zero emissions from aviation. Nature Sustainability.
In the business-as-usual scenario, efficiency continues to improve at 1% per year — the average rate of improvement in recent decades. In 2050, it reaches 27.2 exajoules (EJ), which is equivalent to 7,562 TWh [27.2 * 278 = 7,562].
In the “ambitious” scenario, efficiency improves dramatically, at an average rate of 4% per year. Energy demand in this scenario is 4.17 EJ in 2050, which is equivalent to 1,159 TWh. The numbers in the main text have been rounded for simplicity.
The world currently produces 1,400 TWh in the form of liquid biofuels. To reach 7,600 TWh, this would need to increase 5.4-fold. If we assume that only around half of biofuels can be converted into jet fuel, it would be around 10-fold.
In its Global Feedstock Assessment for SAF Production - Outlook to 2050 report, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) states that: “[...] around 400 Mt of SAF is forecast to be possible to produce in 2050. Although this would be a major achievement, it is 100 Mt of SAF short of what will be needed in 2050. Sustainable biomass feedstocks are largely available, though access can be limited, underlining the need for e-SAF. Still, the major barrier to reaching the 500 Mt needed in 2050 is the pace of technology rollout.”
OECD/FAO (2025), OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2025-2034, Paris and Rome, https://doi.org/10.1787/601276cd-en.
We’ve taken the specific data from this interactive chart, accompanying the report.
To convert the 25 million tonnes of waste oils and fats into jet fuel energy, we use HEFA conversion yields reported by IEA Bioenergy. They describe a typical configuration in which around 13% of the incoming oil ends up as jet fuel, and a jet-maximising configuration in which this can rise to around 50%. Applying these yields and using an energy content of 43 MJ/kg for jet fuel, this corresponds to 39 to 149 TWh of energy.
Since global aviation demand is around 3,900 TWh, this would supply 1% to 4% of demand.
A study by Ecofys, for example, had estimates of 34 million tonnes, rather than the 25 million tonnes we assumed above.
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Hannah Ritchie and Pablo Rosado (2026) - “Could biofuels meet demand for global aviation?” Published online at OurWorldinData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260126-093829/biofuels-demand-global-aviation.html' [Online Resource] (archived on January 26, 2026).BibTeX citation
@article{owid-biofuels-demand-global-aviation,
author = {Hannah Ritchie and Pablo Rosado},
title = {Could biofuels meet demand for global aviation?},
journal = {Our World in Data},
year = {2026},
note = {https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260126-093829/biofuels-demand-global-aviation.html}
}
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