Up In The Air
Making air travel more sustainable means more expense. A new effort explicitly shifts who pays.
Earlier this month, I traveled by plane for the first time for work since starting SustainLab. My flight’s timing meant I could meet up with a friend returning from a business trip to Germany. As I rode the airport tram to the international terminal and waited for my friend to get through customs, I made some simple comparisons between his flight and mine:
distance — almost 8 times farther;
ticket price — about 3 times higher;
travel time — around 4 times as long;
emissions of CO₂e or “carbon-dioxide equivalents” — nearly 4 times as much, at least as estimated by Google.
Another difference: I paid for my ticket and my friend’s client paid for his. But that kind of understanding of “who pays” is based on a market understanding of cost. Now, the Republic of Singapore is slowly shifting the meaning of “who pays” to include the environment. Starting in October, 2026, cargo and passenger flights originating in Singapore will be charged a fee for what’s called “Sustainable Aviation Fuel” (SAF). Already 178 airports around the world distribute SAF according to the International Civil Aviation Organization. But this is the first known fee directly on consumers to pay for it.
Although the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore made the tax announcement last week (10 November 2025), most worldwide press attention came this week. As a journalist, I think that attention was a result of the surprising news out of the 30th Conference Of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, a meeting known as COP30: As reported by The Guardian, the Brazilian presidency of COP30 drafted text for a decision from the summit mentioning a roadmap for phasing out fossil fuel use. It was surprising because the Brazilian hosts previously refused to put any mention of transitioning away from fossil fuels on the conference’s official agenda. More than 80 countries have since joined the call for such a roadmap.
“More Sustainable” Aviation Fuel
Transitioning to Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) is transitioning away from fossil fuels, but is “sustainable” only insofar as SAF feedstocks “do not compete with food crops or output, nor require incremental resource usage such as water or land clearing, and more broadly, do not promote environmental challenges such as deforestation, soil productivity loss or biodiversity loss,” which is how the IATA’s Fact Sheet describes SAFs.
In other words, SAFs are essentially biofuels for jets, and the production of biofuels for other types of engines has many varied and well-known spillover effects.
SAFs also contain the same hydrocarbons as fossil-fuel based jet fuel, and so result in similar tailpipe emissions. Already, emissions from the aviation industry account for between 2 to 5 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, depending on who does the counting. So transitioning to SAFs will do very little to address greenhouse gas emissions if the transition prompts more air travel, which is expected to rise anyway as global population rises. In particular, to say that “SAF recycles the CO₂, which has been absorbed by the biomass used in the feedstock during the course of its life” — as the IATA Fact Sheet does — is to ignore that once carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere “it hangs around, for a long time: between 300 to 1,000 years” according to NASA.
So, for all of those reasons, please allow me to rename SAF as “More Sustainable Aviation Fuel” (MSAF) compared to fossil fuels.
A Slow Shift in Who Pays
A transition to MSAF acknowledges that our environment has been paying some of the cost of our air travel. So with its new fee, Singapore is slowly shifting that cost to those of us who travel or ship by air.
“Economy class passengers will pay S$1.00, S$2.80, S$6.40 and S$10.40 to Bangkok, Tokyo, London and New York respectively.”
— From The Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) 10 November 2025 announcement “New Sustainable Aviation Fuel Levy to Apply from 1 April 2026 for Flights Departing From 1 October 2026”
The fee itself “is set based on the volume of [M]SAF needed to meet the 1% [M]SAF target for 2026,” which suggests that there will be an increase in the fee as MSAF targets rise.
Procuring that MSAF is CAAS itself, having announced only last month (30 October) that it was setting up its own company to do so. Just two weeks before that (14 October), Singapore’s parliament passed an amendment bill allowing for the implementation of the MSAF policies. So in under two years, Singapore went from the announcement of its [More] Sustainable Air Hub Blueprint (19 February 2024) to implementing policy that goes into effect starting next year.
Global Agreements Shift Responsibility Even Slower
As COP30 wraps up this week, it remains uncertain whether there will be a new global resolution to transition away from fossil fuels. This after a vote only last month to delay—by a year—the U.N. International Maritime Organization’s attempt to add the first global tax on fossil-fuel emissions from ships.
As Reuters reported this morning, despite the many countries calling for a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, the latest draft of the COP30 agreement released before dawn by the Brazilian hosts contains no references to fossil fuels, a development that Panama negotiator Juan Carlos Monterray said risked turning the COP30 talks into a “clown show.”
The world’s policymakers did not go so far as to use the term “phase out” two years ago at COP28, but they got close, saying a “transition away” from fossil fuels is needed.
— From “The A.I. Sustainability Paradox” (5 November 2025)
Singapore may be the first country to explicitly charge customers for the increased costs of procuring More Sustainable Aviation Fuel. But it almost certainly won’t be the last. The country’s blueprint and timeline provides a model for other countries to follow. Coincidentally, on Wednesday Emirates Airlines and Emirates National Oil Company announced a memorandum of understanding to explore MSAF supply initiatives in Dubai.
Travel by air? Would you be willing to pay a small fee—even one that increased annually—for increasing use of MSAF instead of fossil-based jet fuels? What decision-makers and industry leaders in your habitat need to hear from you?