Decarbonising Planes Without Batteries or Hydrogen? For Now, Here’s How

In this episode of the Climate Confident podcast, I speak with Alexei Beltyukov, co-founder of Universal Fuel Technologies, about a new approach to producing Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), using a process they call flexiforming.

Unlike traditional methods like HEFA or Fischer–Tropsch, flexiforming allows producers to use a much wider range of feedstocks, from mixed alcohols to naphtas and renewable waste streams, and turn them into jet fuel, renewable diesel, or chemicals. This flexibility is critical as SAF demand surges, especially with EU mandates requiring a rising share of SAF in jet fuel starting in 2025.

We explore:

• Why SAF is the only viable decarbonisation path for long-haul aviation (for now)
• What sets flexiforming apart from conventional SAF production
• How current SAF mandates and incentives (EU vs. US) shape supply and pricing
• Why scaling SAF requires compatibility with existing refinery infrastructure
• The role consumer awareness might play in driving airline demand

Alexei also makes the case for slow but steady growth in SAF adoption, pointing to its current double-digit annual growth and comparing its trajectory to that of electric vehicles 10 years ago.

If you're working in energy, fuels, aviation, or sustainability policy, or you’re just trying to understand how we decarbonise one of the hardest-to-abate sectors, this episode offers a clear, grounded perspective.

🔗 Listen now and learn more at climateconfidentpodcast.com

#sustainableaviationfuel #SAF #decarbonisation #aviation #cleantech #climatechange #renewablefuels #energytransition #climateconfident #podcast

Transcript

0:03

It's indeed the case that with today's technology batteries, hydrogen is another alternative, right? So there, there are planes that, that can fly hydrogen, but the example you brought up Airbus A320 is an example of a long haul passenger plane for which that there isn't a viable alternative other than SAF. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. Welcome to episode 218 of the Climate Confident Podcast, the go-to show for the best practices in climate emission reductions and removals. I'm your host, Tom Raftery, and if you haven't already, be sure to follow this podcast in your podcast app of choice, so you never miss an episode. Now before we get going, a huge thank you to this podcast's, incredible supporters. Your backing keeps this podcast going and I truly appreciate each and every one of you. If you'd like to join our community, you can support the show for as little as three euros or dollars, which is less than the cost of a cup of coffee. You just need to click the support link in the show notes of this or any episode or visit tiny TinyURL dot com slash climate pod. Now, you know how we keep saying aviation needs to decarbonize, but no one can agree on how to do it. Some say batteries, others swear by hydrogen. But for long haul flights, the only real answer right now is sustainable aviation fuel SAF. The problem it's expensive, hard to scale, and the feed stocks are all over the place. That's where today's guest comes in. Alexi Beltyukov is behind a technology that might just crack the SAF challenge wide open. His company, Universal Fuel Technologies, has built a process -called flexi forming that can turn everything from used cooking oil to industrial byproducts into high quality jet fuel, with lower energy, use less waste, and way more flexibility than current systems. If you've ever wondered how we're going to get planes flying clean without waiting for a battery miracle, this episode is for you. But before we get into that, in the coming weeks, I'll be speaking to Avi Greenstein, who's the CEO of Bamboozle, Sangita Waldron, who's an author. Laura Miranda Perez, who's head of sustainability for Oxford pv and Lisett Luik, who's co-founder and CEO of Arbonics. So some excellent episodes coming up. Now, back to today's episode, and as I mentioned, my special guest today is Alexei. Alexei, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself? Thank you, Tom. I'm glad to be here. I'm Alex Beltyukov one of the three founders of Universal Fuel Technologies. Okay. And for people who might be unaware, what is Universal Fuel Technologies, Alexei? So we are a chemical technology company. Our technology called flex reforming can convert a pretty wide range of different things into renewable fuels or chemicals. And so that's the technology we're perfecting, developing, and proud of. Okay. Why? It's a very unusual thing actually in the, in the world of chemistry and fuels. When you can put in a lot of different things and you can actually also use the technology to make a few different things. For example, you can put in pretty much any alcohol. And, and I will take sort of the duration of your podcast if I were to list all of them, but know, methanol, ethanol, propanol, butanol, and so on. So any alcohol, pretty much. You can put in any ether. You can put in a lot of things that have sort of the the industry name of naphtas. And you can also mix them up. right? It's not like you need to have one pure stream. You can have a mixed stream, which is very important because many of the byproducts or side streams of various processes, they have mixed streams coming out, And, and many of them would've been valuable if they were kind of pure play, but since they're not, it it is usually a trouble to purify them and process them. And we can take care of such streams without need to to split the sort of the individual molecules into individual slivers. And a similar picture with the product. Our headline product is sustainable aviation fuel, which usually abbreviated as SAF, but we can also make a bunch of renewable chemicals and something as exotic as renewable gasoline. And by The way, all of that can happen in the same equipment so you can imagine that if somebody were to build a chemical plant and use our technology, they would have quite a bit more freedom than usual to select the feeds that they put in, to select the products that are in demand in the market at that particular moment. And and that really is quite a valuable thing to have. Okay. So, let's take a step back here. You can take lots of different inputs and create several outputs. The inputs that you can take, are they waste from something, some process, some industry, some, are they typically waste solutions? I would probably say no. Like for example, an alcohol is is rarely a waste. It can be a side stream or can be a a lower valued product. Like, for example, if there were a mix of methanol and ethanol there isn't a ready use for that mix usually. But it's not a waste. Similar story, for example, with a naphta, which is something that is a byproduct of people for example, processing used cooking oil into SAF. When they do that, they have a byproduct or side stream which is called naphta, which is hydrocarbon molecules between usually 5 and 10 carbon atoms in length. And so, these things, you know, it's a bit of a head scratcher what to do with it, but there are uses for it and people are using it. So it's not like they would otherwise discard it. No it's just that when you apply our technology to that stream, it creates substantially higher value than otherwise. Okay, I guess that's what I was getting to your, your process, the flexi forming takes something of apparently low value and then can create something of hopefully higher value. The headline one that you mentioned was SAF, sustainable aviation fuel. That's something which is coming into higher demand these days, and there's not a huge supply of it as far as I'm aware, It's hard to get. So obviously supply and demand, that means it's going to be expensive. And there's a mandate now if I remember correctly on airports in the EU that the jet fuel that they stock in their airports has to be, if I remember correctly, it's 2 percent sustainable aviation fuel from 1st of January, 2025 onwards. And that number is going to increase over the next number of years. So the demand for sustainable aviation fuel is going to increase quite significantly. And as I mentioned earlier, there's not a huge number of suppliers. Is that, is that a fair summation of where we are today? The EU is probably the only kind of legislative area, or jurisdiction where you have an actual mandate. I think Singapore had something. And Singapore does tend to work on the mandate side more on the, more than on the incentive side. So I'm kind of assuming there will be a mandate too but for example, North America is more of, of the sort of incentive inclination as opposed to mandating things. So yeah, the EU is, is, is the largest jurisdiction out there that mandated the use of SAF. And you're right that the supply of SAF is currently very much less than the demand. Number of reasons. And some of them are dictated by the physical and sort of chemical realities. The renewable feedstocks that are suitable for the technologies that are available today they are scattered. So there's only a little bit of that at every given geography. And they're generally not as plentiful as, for example, the crude oil that we're used to as feedstock for for making aviation fuel. Yeah, I guess these are the two, the two big factors. The the other factor that is a little bit of our own making is SAF is almost by definition more expensive than jet fuel made from petroleum. Yeah. And it's inevitable. I mean, the, the nature has worked for millions of years to create crude oil and to make it easy for us to manipulate it chemically, whereas what we're trying to make SAF from is something that's on the surface of the Earth which is why we're not sort of releasing any extra CO2, or other greenhouse gases, when we burn that. But that makes us compress this chemical transformation that nature took millions of years to accomplish. We have to compress it into a month or days or hours. And so that, that is an expensive compression to, make, right? And that being more expensive, the production of SAF depends on the incentives that the government puts out there. I mean, in the EU, if you don't have SAF, then you're probably not in business. And so that's the incentive. In North America, it's more sort of a tax play. If you make SAF with certain characteristics, then the government will give you back some tax dollars. And so the balance of, of all these incentives, it influences whether people are using their production facilities to make SAF or for example, renewable diesel which sometimes uses the same feedstock. And so there's a bit of an internal competition there between the renewable diesel and SAF. And sometimes renewable diesel wins. Which, I mean, it is not a bad thing because we're still reducing the use of petroleum and replacing it with something that's on the surface of the earth. But sometimes depending on how the government wants to play, people are making more SAF or more renewable diesel. And, obviously, in terms of the renewable diesel, that can be substituted reasonably straightforwardly using if it's if it's used in trucking, for example, it can be substituted by battery technology. So electric trucks are now becoming a thing. There's no great leap forward required in technology to do that. It's here today. Charging infrastructure needs to be rolled out, but that's easily done as well. Not easily, but that's doable as well. Whereas in the aviation industry, there are some electric planes, but so far, the batteries we have today are not suitable for an A320, for example. You're not going to have an Airbus A320, put batteries in, carry 200 people, 5000 kilometers, that's just not going to happen, not with the battery technology we have today. So sustainable aviation fuel is the only viable alternative that I'm aware of today for reducing the emissions from the aviation industry, which is why it's so important that we start shifting the aviation industry to sustainable aviation fuel, right? I agree with you, Tom. It's, it's indeed the case that with today's technology batteries, hydrogen is another alternative, right? So there, there are planes that, that can fly hydrogen, but the example you brought up Airbus A320 is an example of a long haul passenger plane for which that there isn't a viable alternative other than SAF. So maybe somebody will come up with a breakthrough, and maybe we'll have a different kind of power for large planes. But so far, it looks like at least half of the fleet, at least half of the passenger kilometers traveled don't really have any, any viable alternative other than SAF. And probably the percentage is greater. It's just that, you know, 50 is the, let's say, the smaller bound of, of that. Yeah. And the other thing to take into account as well is that for the airlines, when they buy an airframe when they buy a plane, the lifetime, the expected lifetime of that plane is measured in, two, three decades, as opposed to years. It's not like a car or a truck. It's supposed to last, you know, 20, 30 years probably. And so if they buy a plane today, it should still be operational in 2045 at the very least. And so that case, you can't shift that to electric. That is going to be burning fuel because it has the jets on it, for the next 20 years and so sustainable aviation fuel is the only alternative for most planes today. That's exactly right. Thank you for bringing this up about the longevity of the planes. And and we actually we want them to last longer, right? It's sort of the the right and sustainable thing to do. But that also has a bunch of other effects. Like, for example the planes that were made basically, until a couple of years ago, they all had the a material of the gaskets or the seals in, in their fuel transportation system, the seals that require presence of a certain kind of molecule which is called aromatic molecules. For these seals to stay, you know, plum so that they wouldn't bleak, Right. Because that Cal molecule was ubiquitous in the fossil produced petroleum. And so now when people are making SAF, many of them are actually, most of the SAF that is made today is devoid of that kind of molecule which is why people have to mix it, to blend it with the fossil jet so that the aromatic molecules would enter the, the universe of the fuel through the petroleum of, the fossil, the fossil side. And even though people are starting to make planes that do not require this molecule to be present for everything to work well, for as long as as there's a single plane with this legacy technology in operation, you can't have an airport that can only take certain kind of planes of a certain age. Just impractical. And You cannot have two sets of tanks in the airport, you know, for the new planes versus the old planes. So for as long as there is a single old plane flying out there you have to have full compatibility. And so you have to have these aromatic molecules. So people are now working to produce these molecules from the renewable sources. We're one of those people. And you're using this technology called flexi forming, which you have come up with yourselves and you have all the IP around as far as I'm aware, correct me if I'm wrong on that one, but can you explain in simple terms how it differs from traditional methods like, Fischer Tropsch, or HEFA? These are different technologies. Like, you HEFA is different from Fischer Tropsch, as you're aware, right? So HEFA, you take something like used cooking oil, ideally, and you put it under certain temperature and pressure and add a lot of hydrogen to it. And then the molecules in the cooking oil transform themselves into molecules that are similar to what you would find in, in a fuel. In Fischer–Tropsch, you string things along, right? So you, you take smaller molecules and and you force them together to form longer chains. So our process, works in the following manner. We take smaller molecules, usually, I mean, it can be of different sizes, but usually smaller molecules, and we do string them together, but we also force them to make rings. The aromatic rings. And then depending on what we want to have as a product, we can either keep these rings as they are, we can add different branches to these rings to make the molecules larger, or we can cut them open into kind of a flat structure or linear structure. So that's what we do. And, if you kind of recall, I said we have, we can have different alcohols, we can have this and that. So imagine, you know, like ethanol as, as, an example of an alcohol has two carbon atoms. Right? Jet fuel should have at least nine carbon atoms. So we should string together at least five of these molecules either as a line or as a ring or as a ring with the branches. So that's what our process does. It sort of, it adds molecules together and changes the shape of the molecules as needed. And scaling up SAF production is obviously a huge challenge. One of the biggest challenges is probably feedstock availability. Does flexi forming address the issue of feedstock dependency, and price volatility? Yes. I mean, we are not kind of a solve all, cure all kind of situation. But I think we do a pretty good job on that. Better than, what we have today. So we believe we are maybe like the second generation of, of SAF technology. So the way we do it is twofold. First, as you recall, we can take a bunch of different feedstocks and the feedstock can be changed by the plant operator without changing the equipment. So that gives them a lot of flexibility with regard to which feedstock they choose at a particular time, where it would come from, and so on. The other aspect is, is like you said, the renewable feedstocks rarely come in large quantities from one source. So frequently there is a relatively small source of it. It can be a a kind of a permanent source, but it's a relatively small source compared to the operation of of an oil refinery, for example. And so it's very important that the technology that can convert the feed from that source is such that it can work profitably at such a small scale. And our technology is is better at that than pretty much everybody else, because of our, our origins back in the day. We were serving really small customers that were processing really unusual feed stocks. And so that is something that is highly applicable to that particular aspect of self production. Looking at current SAF adoption. It's still very, very low. Do you think the regulatory frameworks are supporting innovation enough? Or is regulation lagging behind technology? I mean, the amount of airlines that are using significant amounts of SAF in their fuel mix is obviously pitifully low right now. So some of that is regulatory issues. Some of it is availability probably and price, how do we fix that? I think gradual is the word, right? Aviation is is a pretty sensitive area in a sense that, if something were to happen it, it can really totally destroy things that were building up. Right. If for example, somebody were to, put a fuel in a plane that wouldn't be suitable and would cause something to happen to that plane it can completely discredit the entire effort. So, as, as obviously as a technology developer, I'm all for rapid progress and a rapid adoption, our technology taking over the world and all that. But at the same time, you know, being realistic and also somebody who flies planes every now and then, I I'm really grateful to the people who do the fuel qualification and certification. Even though they they do give us you know, and the likes of us, a hard time at the time of passing through these hoops that they've set up for us. But that is to make sure that we don't backtrack. So the progress is slow, but so far we have not backtracked, and I'm glad that that hasn't happened. Maybe we can accelerate a little bit. But not by by a whole lot, because again, I mean, one false step in in such a high visibility area, and and we can roll back, you know, quite a bit. So I, I'd rather have a slow and steady progress that we have been seeing so far, despite the fact that, yes, I mean, for now, adoption of SAF is really quite miniscule. Although actually kind of a bit of a a bit of a footnote to that minuscule adoption, if you look at the growth rates, the growth rates are staggering. I mean, at no time since, like 1920s, did we have such a growth in a energy commodity. Both production and obviously consumption of SAF grows by you know, high double digit percentages every year. And it's predicted to, to continue growing like that for some time. I would imagine we're gonna see a similar pattern to what we've seen with electric vehicles. When in the beginning, it was nothing but a toy for rich people. And I remember back in like 2012, I think it was when I visited Silicon Valley and I saw, you know, this guy driving a Tesla Roadster, which was the first Tesla car out there, was a completely, you know, useless thing toy for rich people. You know, it did, you know, it barely carried one passenger and not a long distance either. And today, you know, you, you can ride your Tesla, you know, almost anywhere in the world for long distance. And, you know, it's, it's a good car and people are buying it. not because it's electric, but because of, you other factors. And so I'm thinking that we are set to experience the same trajectory with SAF. So for now it's, you know, an exotic thing and airlines say, Oh, you know, I'm putting, you know, this many gallons of SAF in my, you know, multi ton kind of capacity tank. And and everybody gets excited about the sort of notional addition of of SAF. But as as the technology grow, you know, costs come down you know, regulations you know, get perfected. People discover new feedstocks and new ways of converting these feedstock. Hopefully, we can play a little role in that. So over time, it's, it's just gonna solidify and improve and and just become, you know, commonplace. Of course, I'm flying. SAF, some people will start saying this, you know, probably within a decade. Interesting, in the last 10 years, we've seen the price of the batteries for electric vehicles dropped by over 90 percent and at the same time, their energy density has increased three to four fold. So two things come out of that. First is, do you think you'll get a similar kind of learning curve and drop in price of SAF to the point where it would be competitive with traditional jet fuel fossil fuel and b) the other side of that is if that technology in batteries keeps evolving the same way with the prices dropping and the energy density increasing, would that maybe take over from SAF? I think both factors can be at play. You know, we haven't lived for 500 years, but we have lived for long enough to see, you know, certain technologies take over completely from a level where they you know, were nothing but a scientific curiosity. Like a computer or a mobile phone, right? I mean, like, I understand the view, just like I grew without a mobile phone, right? now, you know, it's unimaginable. Same story with a computer. So probably both is going to be the case. So I think that both the, the chemical technologies will, will, will go and improve and we'll have a downward cost trend. On on just the production of SAF from different feedstocks and different ways and so on. And I'm hopeful that the battery manufacturers will also, and the battery scientists will improve their product too. So we'll, in the end, have a competition between the two options, and who knows what's gonna win. You know, if, if they put, like, a portable nuclear reactor in a plane, maybe could be better than SAF. So do you think consumer awareness of sustainable aviation fuels could influence airline choices in the future? Because I, I suspect the consumer awareness of sustainable aviation fuels today is very low. I suspect also because people, they like to make the right sustainable choice very often. And so if there was more consumer awareness of sustainable aviation fuels, do you think that that would again put a bit more pressure on the airline industry to adopt more sustainable aviation fuels? I think so. I mean, it's sort of hard to quantify it, but in the end all of these government incentives and and government mandates of today, they are a reflection of public sentiment. And so if, if the sentiment grows stronger and, the vector of it is, is, pointed in a particular direction, I'm sure that both the government, governments are, you know, the slowest actor usually out there. Businesses will react. right? Like, quite recently I got a call from a chemical manufacturer saying that there are no incentives for making sustainable chemicals whatsoever anywhere in the world today. But, we have customers who demand sustainable plastics. And who are prepared to pay a premium quite regardless of any government situation because their end users, they really like buying products that have the sustainability air. And the discussion started about whether we can make these chemicals from renewable sources at a particular price point. So, definitely educating the public making people more aware of how their choices influence the, the, the whole sort of CO2 or greenhouse gas balance on the planet is definitely, a worthy undertaking. Looking ahead, what excites you most about the future of sustainable aviation fuels over the next 5 to 10 years? I think it's sort of this attitude of, of back to basics, back to business. Again, like we've seen with the electric cars. We are, I think, at the peak, or maybe already over the peak of the initial excitement of, wow, this is a curious thing we can produce without waiting for a million years. Now it's back to, okay, who can make it cheaper? Who can make a, a better quality product? And I think this is a really exciting time to, be in the industry. And, I think that our technology can actually fit in nicely into that trend of making a better product cheaper, regardless of whether it's sustainable or, or any other thing. It's just, you know, pure business. You know, people are gonna select our product because it's better, because it's cheaper. We're not quite yet at the parity with the fossil. And it's unclear whether or when that will happen, but we certainly need to raise to the lower cost of production of any energy source, including SAF. What's your own business model? It's not selling SAF, right? It's, is it selling licensing the technology to people who can use the technology to create sustainable aviation fuel? That's right. That's right. I mean, we are a licensing company, a licenser. So we kind of leave the production to people who really know how to produce, to people who already have the facilities, because one thing I did not mention is flexiforming be deployed in existing refinery facilities. And so obviously we would love to sell the technology to people who already have these facilities and don't need to invest. And also don't need to scrap this because, you know, as they decarbonise some of these facilities become obsolete and not needed. And we do what we do best. We perfect the technology, we do the science and we kind of, are the translators of the science into the industrial space. Okay, very good. A left field question for you. If you could have any person or character or dead, real or fictional as a spokesperson or a, an evangelist for sustainable aviation fuel, who would it be and why? Oh my god this is interesting. I'm thinking Scrooge McDuck! Interesting. Go for it. Tell me why. I mean, the guy is focused on, on saving and, and for him, hoarding, I guess, the resources. This is the kind of attitude we need with regard to effectively the health of the planet. Right? And he does it, you know, in in a funny, cynical way. So basically, you know, he has, there's a compulsion to it. He has to do it. He absolutely has to do it and, you know, he sort of uh, dives into a spool of the golden coins, as I recall. So this is, this is kind of what we need to happen to our planet. I mean, I, I live in California and what we need is, you know, people compulsively enjoying the nature that, you know, that they have preserved and cared for and so on. And, this is kind of the attitude we need with regard to all sorts of decarbonisation solutions, including SAF. The degree of compulsion, you know, we absolutely have to do it. This is not an option. This is not a political thing. You know, it's not a left or a right. It's a matter of, you know, we it kind of effectively our generation has created the situation that we are sadly passing onto our children to solve mostly right? The, overhang of the greenhouse gases. And we do need a degree of compulsion to have it solved. So, Excellent. I love it. Great. We're coming towards the end of the podcast. Now, Alexei, is there any question I did not ask that you wish I did, or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of? I think you've done an excellent job Tom. I think you've asked everything, you know, one could have asked for. Fantastic. Great. Superb. In that case, Alexei, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them? Best place to go would be our website, which is Unifuel dot Tech unifuel. tech. And there you have it. Okay. Superb. Great. Alexei, that's been fascinating. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today. Thank you so much, Tom. Thank you. Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about the Climate Confident podcast, feel free to drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com or message me on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you like the show, please don't forget to click follow on it in your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. Catch you all next time.