The SAF Podcast
Welcome to The SAF Podcast, the only podcast on the internet that exclusively covers sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). So if you want to find out the real issues and challenges are for commercialising and scaling SAF production, look no further.
Every week we will be hearing from senior industry leaders who are actively shaping the future of SAF and aviation.
Hosted by Oscar Henderson and brought to you by the team at SAF Investor. Connect with us at www.safinvestor.com
The SAF Podcast
The SAF Podcast: Sustainable Aviation Buyers Alliance - Removing the barrier to corporate market entry
This week Andre de Fontaine, Sustainable Aviation Buyers Alliance (SABA) joins us on The SAF Podcast. Founded in 2021, SABA has been at the forefront of driving the Book and Claim conversation and allowing corporates to purchase SAF for their operations when they cannot control what fuel they fly on.
Andre explains how SABA has grown to include approximately 35 major companies—including BCG, Bank of America, Netflix, and Meta—that share ambitious climate targets and significant aviation footprints. Together, they've facilitated around $200 million worth of SAF certificates representing 50 million gallons of sustainable fuel. The evolution has been dramatic; what began as an almost non-existent market in 2021 now features multiple producers and growing corporate demand.
We also discuss one of SABA's latest initiatives, the launch of SAF Connect, a platform designed to streamline the connection between SAF providers and buyers. Lowering the barriers to entry and the ease with which companies can access SAF is critical to accelerating the higher levels of demand.
The conversation also looks at whether SAF certificates have the ability to provide the long time certainty required by investors to consider demand signals bankable and make projects worth investing in, how purchasing certificates directly from producers or in partnership with airlines differ.
For more information about SABA and how you can get involved, visit flysaba.org.
If you enjoy this episode check out our previous discussion with Gediminas Ziemelis, Avia Solutions Group here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2202964/episodes/17239222-the-saf-podcast-avia-solutions-group-unleasing-baltic-saf-production.mp3?download=true
Hello and welcome to another episode of the SAF podcast. This week I'm delighted to be joined by Andre de Fontaine from SABR, the Sustainable Aviation Buyers Alliance, and today we are going to be looking at SAF certificates. It's a topic that comes up a lot on the podcast. We're going to be looking at book and claim and how it acts as a strong demand signal and the role it has in encouraging investment to get into SAF production, Andre, how are you? I'm good, Oscar. How are you? And encouraging investment to get into SAF production, Andre. How are you? I'm good, Oscar. How are you? I'm fantastic. Thanks for asking. So, before we get into all the detail, do you just want to give people an understanding a bit about your background, maybe before you got involved in Sabre? And then, for those that don't know I'm sure many are aware of what Sabre does and what Sabre is Do you want to explain what Sabre is and does?
Speaker 2:Sure, sure, happy to do so, and thank you, oscar, for inviting me onto the show. We actually pronounce it Saba, so just we do. I don't know what the way of referring to the middle A, but the Sustainable Aviation Buyers Alliance is a coalition of companies that have come together to invest in sustainable aviation fuel to help drive the aviation sector to a net zero future, and it was founded in 2021 by two environmental organizations the Rocky Mountain Institute, known as RMI, and the Environmental Defense Fund, which goes by EDF, and at the time, they were supported by a consulting firm called Engie Impact. And ultimately, what Saba does is it brings companies together.
Speaker 2:So it's corporate travelers or companies that ship goods by air who have set aggressive sustainability targets, climate change targets that often have a scope, three element to it, and so these companies are really characterized by ambitious climate targets, and also they fly a lot.
Speaker 2:So if they're going to meet those targets, they need a way to get their aviation emissions under control and, oscar, as you know, and as I'm sure many of your listeners know, that's not easy to do if you're the corporate traveler.
Speaker 2:Obviously, a lot of these companies have taken a lot of steps to try to limit air travel where possible. But if you look at the companies involved in Saba, you know it's your consulting firms, financial institutions, consumer goods companies that really you know have to fly to meet clients or they need to ship their goods by air, so there's limits to how much they can really reduce travel. So, with what's left over, sustainable aviation fuel is a really great solution. It's the best near-term solution for reducing emissions from travel and the system that we've helped create through Saba is a certificate-based system or a book and claim system, which allows that corporate traveler to make an investment in sustainable aviation fuel and what they get in exchange is an environmental attribute in the form of a certificate which they can use as a claim towards their climate targets, specifically for Scope 3.
Speaker 1:So as a result.
Speaker 2:I mean we think of this as a win-win. What it does is it drives increased investment into the SAF market, it creates a better pathway for companies to meet their climate goals and it also helps the airlines because ultimately, in many instances, either all or a good portion of the premium for the SAF is passed on to the corporate traveler and the airline is able to retain a scope one claim towards their own voluntary climate commitment.
Speaker 2:So we do think it's an elegant system to help advance multiple goals within the SAF space. Now, as far as my background, I'm currently with an organization called the Center for Green Market Activation. I'm a managing director here and I work on our programs in aviation, heavy-duty trucking and also cement and concrete, and we're following a similar approach in GMA. We're really seeking to take the SAVA model and build it out across multiple sectors. And then, prior to GMA, I was with NG Impact, so that's the consulting firm that helped um stand up. Saba uh earlier and I was leading the demand aggregation work streams, running our joint procurements, and prior to that was doing some stuff um in the us federal government at the department of energy so I think saba or sabre can be the aviation tomato, tomato contribution to that, to that discussion I guess you're right.
Speaker 2:Um, or maybe it's a british english versus american english issue, so or Saber can be the aviation tomato, tomato contribution to that discussion.
Speaker 1:I guess you're right, or maybe it's a British English versus American English issue. Yeah, I'd imagine that has something to do with it, but I will pronounce it as Saber from now on, so you mentioned it slightly there. The idea of the book and claim and the SAF certificate model is separating the economic value, the sort of the environmental value, and the physical molecule of SAF, which helps airlines in their ability to gain access to SAF because they're not exposed to the full brunt of the green premium because their margins are so thin. So it allows the corporate customers to shoulder some of that burden for them and help them still actually operate and take those users scope the fuel to for their scope one, emissions, and then the corporates for their scope three, who are some of the the members, just a couple of, because you got so many members that have joined up recently.
Speaker 2:So, um, yeah, people understanding of who's involved, yeah, I mean we, we, we have new members that join, you know, almost every month, so I sometimes forget the full count, but we're somewhere in the 30s, mid 30s, let's say um.
Speaker 2:And from a sector perspective, um, kind of we're heavy with, uh, with the major consultancies. So companies like BCG, pwc joined relatively recently, as did KPMG, and then we do have some financial institutions involved, and this is all publicly available on our website, but companies like Bank of America, morgan Stanley, are involved, and then we also have many of the tech firms like Netflix, meta, amazon, and then also some consumer goods, like Lululemon is another one. So those are, I think, the kind of the big sectors. But of course, we're interested in growing, interested in expanding. Almost all companies are going to have some aviation sector emissions, and so we, you know, we're eager to see more people get into the SAF and SAF certificate game. But the sweet spot has really been, you know, those companies, of course, that have ambitious climate targets and a big part of their footprint is in aviation.
Speaker 1:And most of the companies involved are US-based. Obviously they're global companies, but they've got very strong US bases. Is that where you're seeing sort of predominantly, where the sort of the interest and sort of the engagement is in this so far?
Speaker 2:Well, I would say I don't know if it's an indication of interest or it's just a little bit of a bias, that we have, you know being primarily US based organizations that are leading the initiative.
Speaker 2:But, certainly the companies that we work with are very global. Many, though not all. We do have some companies that are based in Europe. I'm thinking about, you know, nova Nordisk, for example, would be one, and pharmaceuticals is a sector that we think is primed for growth within Saba. We do as a next step. You know we were founded in 2021, so we're still a relatively new organization.
Speaker 2:But as we look forward global expansion in the Asia-Pacific region, we think is a place where SAF is primed for growth and we think a corporate demand signal in that region would be quite, quite useful.
Speaker 1:That region would be quite, quite useful and how much SAF you know certificates has been bought and retired through SABA so far.
Speaker 2:Do you have a rough number on on that? Our biggest procurement that we completed um last year was for about 200 million million worth of SAF certificates and this worked out to, if I'm not mistaken, about 50 million gallons. So you'll have to, I think again, a geographic issue you have to do the conversion for me to liters, but it was a pretty, pretty big buy. Now that's over a five-year period, so it wasn't all at once, and so these are contracts that have been largely signed. And so those are contracts that have been largely signed, and so those certificates are going to change hands through primarily through the SAFSI registry not exclusively, but principally through that registry over the next few years. And that built upon a much smaller pilot procurement that we ran back in I think it was 22 or 2023. Now that's through the joint procurements that we've run so far.
Speaker 2:One of the nice things about Saba is that we're building a lot of this market infrastructure and also growing the education amongst both the buyers and the sellers, and so things like the SAF certificate registry is something that RMI built as a part of Saba, but it is bigger than Saba. It is available for people that want to exchange attributes, even outside of our managed RFP process. Similarly, we have drafted up sustainability requirements for the fuel itself that we use in our procurements, but those are, of course, free and publicly available for folks to use on their own. So what we're seeing through the members that we work with, but also companies outside of Saba, is that they're using our tools in order to purchase SaaS certificates outside of our directly managed system. I can't exactly quantify how much that is, but it's a lot. And then, separately, as we move forward, I think we're really excited about a couple of new procurement opportunities that we launched recently where we expect additional demand and additional transactions to flow expect, um you know, additional demand and additional transactions to flow.
Speaker 1:one of the sort of benefits and nice aspects of saba is the the ability to sort of connect and work with producers and corporates and customers within the organization, and you've got a thing called a platform called saf connects, don't you, yep? Basically, people within Saba have the ability to connect with each other who are looking for certificates and producers who have got fuel and sort of enabling those parties to meet each other in a more streamlined, easier fashion. Do you just want to explain sort of what that is? Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're very excited about this and it's something that launched um just uh, last week and we were actually gonna be doing this. We did a bit of a soft launch last week for our members. We'll be doing the full press release um, I believe, next week and, as you said, the principle behind safsi connect really is to develop a platform that can more efficiently connect um the providers of s SaaS certificates with the buyers. Now, I think one of the ways to explain this is to contrast it with some of our efforts in the past. So, while we're very proud of the RFPs that we've run previously, they had some limitations, they took a lot of time to run and they came with relatively rigid timelines. We had a window through which providers had to make offers, and then we had a window through which providers had to make offers, and then we had a window through which the buyers needed to make purchasing decisions, and that doesn't work really well for a dynamic market like SAF, where you're seeing new production come online all the time and then more and more buyers kind of getting into the game as the market progresses. So what we wanted to tell the producers and the buyers is like let's make deals, but let's do it on your timeline rather than ours.
Speaker 2:And so now what we've done through Sassy Connect is it's an open database, essentially, where providers are able to come to us and say look, we've got an offer, we have fuel that's available.
Speaker 2:We want to provide SaaS certificates to your members and we accept those on a rolling basis. Now we do the vetting, we do the comparison of the offer against our sustainability criteria, which has things like carbon intensity requirements, commitments to use a registry, some stuff on regulatory additionality. The qualifying offers then go into a database that we manage and it's a nice tool from an IT perspective. There's a lot of information that the buyers can then filter by and sort, and the buyers, the Saba customers. This is only available to Saba customers at the moment. The Saba customers are able to enter the database and then they can find SAF certificates that meet their needs and then, when they do, they then contact the provider to wrap up the deal and then we can support with the contracting. So we think this is going to be a nice tool. It is focused on commercially available fuel, so it's trying to grow the market, for we anticipate the platform will be dominated by HEFA-based providers and over time that may change, but in the early years that's really what we're looking at.
Speaker 2:And we've been really pleased by the reception that we've gotten so far. Several SAF certificate providers have come forward with multiple offers and at the same time, we're seeing pretty significant demand, you know, approaching levels that are similar to the last procurement that we did, and we expect that to grow over time.
Speaker 1:And we expect that to grow over time. Recently we did another episode where we looked at traceability and sort of it was a lot of the discussion was dictated by sort of AI and the role that could have going forward and sort of assisting with traceability. How are you you mentioned a couple of the things that you're sort of doing how are you managing the you know, the traceability of SAF, the double counting issue, which I know is a lot of people's big worry about the book and claim system generally is the potential for there to be a double counting errors in this? How are you approaching monitoring that, managing that, especially as you're looking to sort of grow rapidly as more production comes online?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great question and of course it's top of mind, I think, when you're dealing with certificates, that kind of embody, you know, kind of these like intangible commodities that are, you know, massless, odorless, tasteless, and so a big part of that is the SAF certificate registry that we've built. It's a digital registry that is really built for this purpose of tracking and tracing the attributes throughout the value chain. Now, we're not alone in creating a registry, though we do think ours has certain advantages. But the purpose behind that registry is so that you can have transparency, and confidence that when the attribute is created, which in our system is at the point of blending, when the NEAT SAF is blended with the conventional jet fuel, an attribute is created and then it is entered into the registry and then it is transferred from one party to another, to the end customer that then retires it. And in the SAFC registry we do have a publicly available retirement table and the principle there is really to try to mitigate or avoid the risk of double counting.
Speaker 2:The attribute can really only be transferred or it can only be retired once, and so that should give confidence to the system that there's no double counting taking place.
Speaker 1:A lot of people initially think that book and claim's got a very strong case because the infrastructure around across the value chain, beyond the sort of projects transporting the physical staff from to enough airports where the servicing is a really big challenge and actually moving the physical fuel to these airports is just impossible to cope with the demand. Do you think as time develops and, as you know, more fuel becomes available and it gets to more airports, there's still going to be a place for book and claim or do you think it's more a stop gap until this infrastructure where you can see saf is basically like everyday fuel? Yeah, you get that full transition and full lending into the existing infrastructure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a really good and, I would say, somewhat complicated question, particularly for SAF. I mean as a general principle. As I mentioned earlier, at GMA we are developing book and claim systems for various sectors and we really do see this tool as being most impactful in the early stages of the markets for these technologies, where the availability is low, it's limited quantities, in limited locations and at high prices, and so book and claim creates the flexibility that expands the investment pathways and then you can grow this market.
Speaker 2:So is there a point at which book and claim is either no longer useful or potentially even harmful, because it can slow the development of the global infrastructure if you continue to concentrate the investment in specific locations. So that's something that's front of mind. It's really hard to define. What is that point? Where is that inflection point where you need to start phasing things out?
Speaker 2:What I will say about SAF that makes it, I think, a little bit different from other commodities is that part of the thing that we're trying to solve for is the value chain disconnect not just the geographic disconnect, but the value chain disconnect that the corporate traveler or the company that is shipping goods really has no way of directly investing in SAF because of their position within the value chain. So they can't very well tell the airline. It's not like driving a car where you can say, okay, I want an electric vehicle or I want to pull into a biofuel pump. You don't have the ability to do that because you have one ticket, one seat on one plane. And so we do think the certificate mechanism may for SAF may outlast book and claim systems for other commodities, just because there is no other way for that company to make the investment count the reductions towards their climate goals.
Speaker 1:That's a really good point about getting access to the fuel and those certificates and the methodology of doing that. The only way is currently doing is SAF certificates. And then there's the other sort of side of the argument is another big argument for book and claim is the green premium aspect of it. So presumably as the green premium comes down, as people anticipate and think it will do as supply comes out, you might not necessarily the argument behind book and claim being beneficial for the green premium. So airlines can get the scope ones potentially changes as well as that green premium comes less finishing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think we definitely want, you know, saf to be ubiquitous and we want the carbon intensity of the overall fuel supply to reduce dramatically over time. And then is there a point at which book and claim becomes less important. Yes, we certainly hope so, but we have a ways to go. I mean, you know the numbers. I mean I think today's the penetration rate of SAF globally it's less than 1% and I think it's substantially less than 1%. So there is still we have a lot of other problems to worry about before we start worrying about that bigger problem. So we're trying to focus still on, you know, improving the system, building demand and continuing to improve the penetration rates that's a very good point.
Speaker 1:Um, looking at sort of the agreements themselves, we've talked a lot about corporates being able to go direct to producers to get SAF certificates. We've also seen across the industry there being offtake agreements signed that include a SAF certificate element. Most notably this is with the, the ESAF, the synthetic fuels that you see going on, and they're sort of long-term big offtake agreements, arguably performing a slightly different role. But what's the sort of the difference in terms of going to directly to a producer and trying to get some certificates there versus partnering in an off-take agreement, whether that's, you know, heifer or advanced aligning, with an airline and a producer almost forming that sort of tripartite agreement? What's the difference in sort of benefit that it brings and, you know, access and actually sort of practicalities of it?
Speaker 2:Yep, Yep, well, let me just I'll take one step back. I mean, I think we're at Saba. We're in favor of, you know, the corporate customer having options for how to buy. So in many respects, you know whether you buy. There are differences between buying from an airline, buying directly from a fuel provider. We're also seeing you know whether you buy. There are differences between buying from an airline, buying directly from a fuel provider. We're also seeing, you know, some of these kind of like third-party brokers emerge, and so competition is good. You know, options are good. So, before getting into the relative pros and cons, I think it's important just to kind of reflect on the fact that we think that these pathways are all viable and that it's important to provide the corporate customer with the different options.
Speaker 2:You know if you're a company you're trying to decide whether they're purchased from an airline or directly from a fuel provider or a third party broker. You know it's hard to say. I mean, the market is still new and I think there's actually a fair amount of variation even within those categories.
Speaker 2:So it's hard to make these kind of categorical comparisons. But what I will say is that when you work directly with a fuel provider, you are able to get the information directly from the source, and so you'll know. They can transfer the info to you. They can tell you right away what are the certifications that they're utilizing pricing info. There's no filter between you and you also can get the you know defined fuel. You can specify that specific fuel oftentimes, sometimes when you work with large airlines, you kind of have a basket of staff and they tell you we're going to sell you out of this basket, but you're not necessarily going to be able to tell you exactly what gallon from what provider.
Speaker 2:So if you care a lot about a specific, a specific batch or a specific fuel provider, maybe working directly with a fuel provider would make more sense. The advantage of working with an airline is that many of these companies have major deals just for their business. Travel with a particular airline partner, and sometimes purchasing SAF, can be a way of deepening that relationship, and there can be certain additional perks that the airline can include into the deal. So that's one reason why you might want to stick with an airline, but by and large, I think it really is the more offers, the more competition in the market, I think, ultimately the better deal for the customer. So it's not. We're not in a position where we would ever be able to recommend one pathway over the other.
Speaker 1:We think it's important to have both available market that this is enabling, has the ability to sort of unlock state the stable long-term demand that you know producers, investors or these stakeholders looking to scale production want and need enabled to get their projects built, constructed, finance, getting the through final investment decisions and especially beyond sort of the mandated areas that have implemented mandates as a role to do that. Do you think sort of book and claim has the ability to provide that stability of demand for producers?
Speaker 2:for, for you know an extent, the extended long term as opposed to the immediate short term yes, I mean we, we certainly hope so, and that that is in many respects sort of the.
Speaker 2:The overarching premise behind saba is to kind of is bring the corporate voluntary demand to the table, to send the signal to the market that there are buyers of this fuel, that people that are willing to pay the premium so that they can have the confidence to go out and get financing and scale their production.
Speaker 2:Now I think embedded with your question is a little bit of this issue of the time period that we're talking about here, and so we were talking about SAF C-Con Connect a little while ago, which we do is targeted at commercially available fuels.
Speaker 2:While there's no real time limit on the contracts that we will facilitate through that, we do anticipate that they will be relatively short-term contracts. It's built a little bit more for the companies that have near-term climate targets and are looking to purchase SAF certificates fairly quickly in order to meet those targets. We think that's important, but we also recognize it's not enough in terms of growing the SAF market, and so we are separately running a different procurement, more of a traditional RFP, which is looking at five to 10-year offtakes on the corporate side on next generation fuels, so thinking about things like e-fuels or biofuels that achieve very deep carbon reductions and use feedstocks that are more scalable and sustainable over time and we are looking to. The objective here is to aggregate enough demand so that we can help one or more plants reach final investment decisions, so that's definitely on our radar.
Speaker 2:We think it's achievable and we do believe that, as you said, I mean the mandates in Europe are really really important to provide the regulatory certainty that fuel providers need to move forward. But of course, europe is a very important geography but it's still limited. Aviation is global when these regulations don't exist, I think that voluntary demand um can step in and help the market grow um outside of those areas do you think you mentioned that you're working on this rfp for advanced fuels, looking at five to ten year agreements.
Speaker 1:A couple of sort of follow-ups on that is you know why five to ten years? Because you know you speak to a lot of investors. They're thinking they're doing you know if you're talking to a debt provider they're providing debt over a 15-year period. So if you look at that and they don't necessarily line up, would you go okay, you know you've got a lot of the way there, but not quite the whole way. And then also on that, is there enough stability? Do you think investors understand the stability of a SAF certificate that a corporate customer has bought in terms of solidifying, being a surefire signal, because there was a lot of sort of caution around offtake agreements and what had to be involved in an offtake agreement for it to be bankable. Do you think there's an understanding of the bankability of a SAF certificate from the investment landscape?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, let me take those two questions in order. So, in terms of the time period, when we talk to the fuel providers, basically what they tell us is the longer the offtake period the better, and so I don't disagree that a lot of banks the 15 years is ideal, but five years is not meaningless. I mean, I think that anything that you can do that gets you into the realm of the multi-year is quite helpful to the staff producer, and we would love to go longer than five years, but we just need to kind of take our cues from the members and the corporate buyers, and what we saw in our last RFP was that five years. We did have a number of companies that were willing to enter into five-year deals. Beyond that it gets more challenging. You can structure the deal so it's five-year firm commitment with an additional five-year option, which can be helpful.
Speaker 2:We saw some companies do that and of course we're going to continue to press and see if we can move beyond five. But the five to ten is sort of what we've gathered from our corporate customers as being sort of where they are today. And then we think that there's things I mean number one we still think that that's useful to the field providers, one of the things that we're looking at. This gets a little bit back to your question about, you know, the partnership with the airlines. But on this next gen RFP that we're running, you know, we think that you know a useful model here would be sort of a fuel provider with an airline coming in with a joint offer.
Speaker 2:One of the things that we've heard from some airlines is that you know, they might be willing to do a 10-year offtake with the fuel provider for the physical fuel if they've got a five-year corporate offtake for the attributes. So the combination of those things can kind of help move us forward. So that's a model that we're interested in exploring. So that is on the time period. Now, as far as the bankability, for me it's really less about the certificate and more about the way the contract is structured. So ultimately, you know, I do think that the banks are familiar with the certificate model. You know the rec market is robust. You know there's plenty of experience there financing renewable energy projects, um, and I don't know that the certificate is going to be what scares the financial institutions away it's really more.
Speaker 2:How is the contract written? What are the assurances that the corporate offtaker is going to provide the funding that's required in the contract?
Speaker 1:that's more of a technical issue than it is like a conceptual issue with the certificate itself and presumably the benefit of you know these corporate customers is they're a lot less of a risky prospects if someone's looking at. If you've got lots of demand from you know a couple of big institutions that are sort of global entities, the risk attached to them is significantly lower than alternate ways in which you can sort of show guarantee and longevity of revenue. So that sort of goes in a producer's favor as well. When you're sort of looking at that investment, yep, I think so.
Speaker 1:On looking at sort of production levels for 2024 we touched on that it's still less than one percent and iata forecasts last year were actual production was below where the the forecasts imagined they would be. Um, it looks like and obviously save has been saba, sorry, has been running for um see, I caught myself that time. Um has been running for many years but still production isn't where it's necessarily anticipated and there's undoubtedly a numerous region sort of reasons for that. But how do you look at sort of you know the buy-in from your membership and corporate customers? Is it not necessarily being a stronger demand signal, as we think it could be, should be, or is it just another sort of piece of the puzzle that's sort of perplexing everyone currently?
Speaker 2:In terms of the forecasted demand?
Speaker 1:you mean In terms of sort of production levels not meeting what forecasts were and it was under sort of where people anticipated it would be. Do you think there's an element of you know not enough voluntary buy-in, as much as it could be, should be, or do you think they're absolutely doing all they absolutely can to to show that demand and there's some other sort of extraneous beyond that? Beyond that, they're contributing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I, you know that's as far as the global. You know. You're asking a very difficult question. Why is the supply coming in below forecasted?
Speaker 1:I'm just trying to find someone to blame.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Point a finger.
Speaker 2:That's all I'm trying to say so, I don't, I don't have the answer, let me. But let me. Let me answer your question in a slightly different way, but I do think. I do think. You know, we, we.
Speaker 2:I've been involved in savas since 2021 when we did our first uh procurement. It was, you know, finding saff certificates available for sale was was really like pulling teeth. I mean there was, and people even told us like, why are you doing this? This is stupid. You're not going to find any SAF available for sale, but we did find some. It was a small amount, but it was enough for us to run a pilot.
Speaker 2:At the time, there was basically two producers in the world and most of their output was booked and sold, but we were able to find some in the world and most of their output was booked and sold, but we were able to find some. Then, a couple of years later, we did the next procurement and we bought way more. I mean, there were multiple providers. The numbers I shared earlier $200 million worth of investment, 50 million gallons, but we were only able to meet about half the demand that had been expressed by the corporate customers and there was still a lot of limitations. Some deals that we thought looked good didn't pan out for various reasons, and so it was still a bit of a challenge.
Speaker 2:Now, as we're getting ready to launch Sassy Connect, I've been really pleasantly surprised by the variation and number of offers that are entering into that system. So from my vantage point and this is much smaller than the global picture, but from where I sit the situation has massively improved over the last few years. From the supply side, we have a ways to go. Obviously Now, as far as the you know, what's holding folks back Like is the demand kind of not proceeding at the rate that we wish it could. I think that there's some truth to that. I mean, when you look at Saba's, we're very, very proud of the leadership that our members are showing through Saba, but that's 35 or so I forgot the exact number but that's a subset, clearly, of the companies in the world. There's a lot more that can be buying Saba certificates. I think one of the things that has been holding people back has been some of the confusion around whether these certificates can count towards voluntary climate goals.
Speaker 2:And so this is where we think there could be a very, very significant acceleration of corporate voluntary demand is if the voluntary frameworks can come out with clear rules of the road for how to count these certificates towards corporate goals. We think, if that happens, it could really open things up pretty significantly, including going back to our conversation earlier regarding the long-term deals. I think that's where, you see, some of the reticence from companies is like I don't really want to do a multi-year deal for a commodity that is very expensive, that I don't have assurances that I can then count towards the target. So we do see, and I should state that these frameworks are putting out positive signals about counting SaaS certificates towards goals. So we think we're optimistic that that's one of the levers that can help unlock some additional demand levers that can help unlock some additional demand.
Speaker 1:And presumably, as you said, we've said, it's very new. The industry is very new. The idea of applying book and claim and certificates to it is very new. The methodology and the practicalities of doing that are still kind of working themselves out. People are getting used to it and, equally, if we look further down the line, there might be some mechanisms, some systems that we don't currently possess that can adapt to what you know the customer wants, what these, these corporate customers need and to be able to engage more frequently and in sort of larger quantities going forward. So it's it's an evolving situation, is it nothing? Nothing about this is set in stone and nothing about it's going to be entrenched for an extended period of time. Yep, absolutely so. Is there a criteria for people to join Saba? Is there sort of a size of company have to be, or or can just sort of anyone that's sort of interested in getting involved and wants to play a part? Can they get involved?
Speaker 2:Yes, I mean we're open to. You know just about any company, and I should mention that you know the primary membership is the corporates. You know whether that's tech, consulting, financial services. But we also do have a couple of airlines within Saba that we're very pleased to work with. So we are open to airlines as well. They play a slightly different role within the Saba ecosystem but, to your point, we have no requirements. We're prepared to welcome any type of company. I will say that the most important thing size is not really the issue. It's more about the commitment, that companies need to be committed to reducing their emissions from flying, and then the rest sort of takes care of itself. I mean, it probably makes most sense for those that do have a relatively significant portion of their emissions from aviation. But the most important thing really is the commitment.
Speaker 1:And how should anyone, if they do listen to this, are not a member of Saba? How can they get involved?
Speaker 2:How can they reach out to? I think you know they can contact me directly or they can go to our website, which is flysabaorg, and there is an email address that is on the website which, let me okay, it is info, fly sabaorg. And if you email that, one of us will get back to you quickly um to set up an intro call and talk through the various benefits of being a part of the sustainable aviation buyers lines that was an incredibly quick google search I have to allison to thank for that so, um, that was.
Speaker 1:That was seriously impressive. But I'll put both of that. I'll put the website and that email address in the podcast description as well, so if anyone is interested in reaching out and finding out more directly, they are able to do that. Andre, thank you so much for your time. That was a really interesting look at the role that Sabah and the wider book and claim ecosystem can have in accelerating SAF. So thank you very much for your time.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for having me. It was a lot of fun.