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India’s biofuels story has a track record of arriving ahead of schedule. Ethanol blending moved from under 1.5% in 2013-14 to 20% in 2025-26i, five years earlier than originally planned. The International Energy Agency now expects India to be the fastest-growing bioenergy market in the world through 2030, accounting for more than a third of global bioenergy demand growth over that periodii. From refineries with CORSIA-recognised certification for SAF production, to airlines entering supply-linked partnerships and petroleum corporations with SAF-capable sites under development. Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is set to follow the same trajectory. The industrial momentum is real. What remains uncertain is whether the feedstock utilised to produce the fuel can withstand the level of scrutiny the global SAF market demands, and that gap deserves a deeper look.
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A market assembling itself quickly
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The comparison with ethanol’s journey is instructive precisely because it shows what rapid scale-up can achieve, and what it can put at risk. On policy and delivery, India has done its part: National Policy on Biofuels,,introduced in 2018 and amended in 2022, brought the 20% blending target forward and widened eligible feedstocksi, and procurement has since climbed above roughly 12 billion litres against production capacity of around 20 billion litres by 2026i.
India is also the world’s third-largest air transport market, carrying roughly 174 million passengers in 2024iii, and it is following a similar policy sequence for SAF: indicative blending requirements on international flights of 1% in 2027, 2% in 2028 and 5% by 2030iv, still indicative rather than enacted, but directionally unambiguous. The industrial response has arrived early. A domestic carrier operated the country’s first commercial flight on blended SAF in 2023v. An integrated ethanol-to-jet process was demonstrated at pilot scale in early 2026. One refiner has begun co-processing trials at an existing site, with plans for a larger alcohol-to-jet plant to followvi. Another has three SAF-capable sites moving through development. India is not waiting to see whether SAF demand materialises. It is positioning to supply it. Power-to-X fuels, produced using renewable electricity, water, and carbon, deliver very high life cycle emissions reductions and will be needed to meet long-term aviation climate targets once bio-based options plateau.
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The volume argument has already been won
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Any serious doubt about whether India has enough biomass to support this ambition does not survive contact with the numbers. The National Biomass Atlas puts surplus agricultural residue at approximately 228.5 million tonnes a yearvii, concentrated across Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and West Bengal. A 2025 white paper from the Global Biofuels Alliance and BCG estimates 520 to 570 million tonnes of excess non-grain biomass once collectability and competing uses are factored inviii. The IEA calculates that agricultural residues could theoretically support around 1.4 exajoules of ethanol production, against roughly 0.1 exajoules currently realisedix. On raw tonnage, India’s feedstock base is not the constraint. Treating it as the constraint is where the current SAF conversation goes wrong.
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The unresolved question that sits between the field and the refinery
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As India’s SAF sector scales, the needs for investment, infrastructure, logistics and offtake are clear, and each of them can ultimately be underwritten. There is, however, something none of them provides: proof, to airlines, financiers and export markets, that the fuel being produced is what it claims to be. That is where sustainable aviation fuel certification becomes the deciding factor.
Municipal solid waste illustrates where that proof breaks down. The Central Pollution Control Board recorded 170,339 tonnes generated daily in 2021-22, of which only 91,512 tonnes were treatedx, leaving perhaps 40 to 50 million tonnes a year realistically usablexi. Segregation and contamination, not scarcity, are the binding constraints here too, which is why municipal waste is currently better matched to compressed biogas and local circularity than premium SAF. Meanwhile, ethanol’s own feedstock mix has tilted toward grains and maizexii, strongly incentivised crops that now compete directly with SAF’s alcohol-to-jet route for the same upstream input.
Every single one of these threads points to the same underlying issue: abundance without an audit trail.
What is in question then, for any buyer sitting outside India, is whether a tonne of Indian SAF can be traced back to a genuine, environmentally and socially responsible feedstock source, with the chain-of-custody documentation and lifecycle greenhouse gas accounting to back that claim up under international schemes.
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The gap between eligible and trusted
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SAF typically costs two to three times the price of conventional jet fuel. Airlines, financiers and end users paying that premium need more than a fuel that technically qualifies under an ICAO CORSIA-approved certification scheme. They need a fuel whose sustainability credentials hold up to global market scrutiny, under CORSIA, and in the eyes of export buyers.
This is the difference between eligibility limited to regulatory compliance only and full RSB certification. Eligibility confirms a fuel meets a minimum threshold. RSB certification goes further, confirming through independent verification, that the RSB Principles and Criteria covering feedstock sourcing, land use, chain of custody and social safeguards have actually been applied and checked.
RSB’s scrutiny does not stop at carbon, and in a context such as India’s one, it should indeed go beyond it.
Feedstock in India moves through collection networks, smallholder farms and municipal waste systems before it reaches a refinery, which places the people handling it inside the certified chain rather than outside it. ICAO’s criteria already extend into this territory, covering human and labour rights, land and water rights, local development and food security alongside greenhouse gas performancexiii. RSB’s P&C address the same ground explicitly: Principle 4, Human and Labour Rights, requires that operations do not violate human rights or labour rights and promote decent work and the well-being of workers, whilst Principle 12, Land Rights, and Principle 5, Rural and Social Development, apply to ensure the social responsibility principles are respected at the biomass sourcing level, screening potential risks and mapping risk mitigation actions.
Traceability is therefore not only a question of where a tonne came from. It is a question of the conditions under which it was collected.
For a market scaling SAF production, the certification distinction determines whether fuel is merely produced, or whether it is claimable, financeable and CORSIA-ready, whilst the RSB Certification rigor goes further, addressing long-term value creation and risk exposure.
RSB’s framework has been cited in comparative studies by UNEP, the Bioplastic Feedstock Alliance and Germany’s Blue Angel eco-label, among others, for its rigour, transparency and stakeholder engagement. .
What credible certification verifies
A robust biofuel certification scheme for the Indian SAF sector needs to answer questions that volume figures alone cannot:
- Is the feedstock genuinely low-risk from an indirect land-use change (ILUC) risk assessment standpoint, or does it carry ILUC concerns that undermine the sustainability case?
- Can the fuel be tracked back from feedstock to final product through an auditable chain of custody biomass system, whilst ensuring transparency and traceability from the harvesting and collecting of the biomass to the biofuel production plant?
- Does the lifecycle greenhouse gas accounting meet the thresholds international buyers and regulators require?
- Are social safeguards for smallholders and feedstock suppliers built into the certification process, not treated as an afterthought?
- Does the scheme require environmental, social and governance performance to be demonstrated simultaneously, or does it allow a carbon threshold to be met whilst costs are externalised onto land, water, food systems or communities?
RSB operator certification and certification body accreditation exist to answer exactly these questions, independently of the producer making the claim.
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Certification as market access, not compliance cost
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It is tempting to treat certification as a final step, something to bolt on once production is running. For a developing SAF market, that framing gets the sequence backwards. Sustainable aviation fuel certification is what turns a domestic production capability into an internationally financeable and tradeable one. Without it, Indian SAF risks being technically produced but commercially stranded, unable to command the premium buyers, or satisfy the traceability requirements, that make the fuel worth producing in the first place.
For producers investing in the SAF sector and supporting the country to meet governmental targets, whether refiners, emerging fuel producers or feedstock aggregators, the practical question is not whether to pursue certification, but rather when to start the process relative to production timelines. Certification systems, chain-of-custody documentation and lifecycle accounting take time to establish properly. Producers that begin this work alongside plant construction, rather than after first fuel, are the ones positioned to sell into CORSIA-compliant and export markets from day one.
To understand what CORSIA-recognised certification requires of an Indian producer, and how RSB Certification can contribute to operational resiliency and performance, get in touch with RSB’s Certification team.
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Sources:
i Press Information Bureau / Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, Ethanol Blended Petrol Programme – Q&A, 10 July 2026. It states blending “remained stuck at around 1.5% until 2014” and shows ESY 2025–26 at 20% for Nov–June 2026// PIB / MoPNG, same release, Annexure: states ethanol blending with petrol stood at 1.53% in 2013–14 and notes India achieved 20% ethanol blending in 2025, five years ahead of the 2030 deadline.
ii IEA, 12 February 2025
iii IATA, June 2025
iv Times of India, 24 May 2026; NDTV, 1 December 2025
v Times of India, 4 May 2023
vii National Biomass Atlas, Sardar Swaran Singh National Institute of Bio-Energy
viii Global Biofuels Alliance, February 2025
ix IEA, 12 February 2025
x PIB/MoEFCC, 8 February 2024
xi Global Biofuels Alliance, February 2025
xii Business Today, 8 July 2026; Economic Times, 8 July 2026
xiii ICAO, June 2025
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The post India’s SAF opportunity is real. Credibility is what will unlock it. appeared first on RSB.
