Sustainable Aviation Fuel, or SAF, has moved from climate ambition to operational necessity. Capable of cutting lifecycle emissions by up to 80% without requiring new aircraft or engines, SAF is widely seen as the only scalable decarbonisation tool for a sector that is hard to electrify. Industry bodies estimate it will account for most of aviation’s path to net zero by 2050. Without it, airline climate pledges simply do not add up.
On paper, Brazil looks unusually well placed to supply that future. The country has abundant biomass, a globally competitive ethanol industry and access to agricultural and urban waste streams suitable for advanced biofuels. Multiple SAF projects — using ethanol-to-jet and waste-based routes — have been announced. Yet Brazil still has no continuous commercial SAF production and no regular SAF supply at its airports. The constraint is not feedstock, technology or export potential. It is domestic access.
Brazil’s aviation fuel infrastructure is highly concentrated at home. Petrobras supplies more than 90% of the jet fuel (QAV) sold to distributors. Downstream, Vibra Energia, Raízen and Air BP account for roughly 99% of distribution, controlling fuel farms, storage tanks and hydrant systems inside airports. The country’s two main hubs — Guarulhos International Airport (in São Paulo) and Galeão International Airport (in Rio de Janeiro) — are the only ones connected by pipeline to refineries and function as domestic logistics gateways for other airports.
That architecture delivers reliability, safety and scale for fossil jet fuel — and has done so for decades. But it also creates structural barriers to domestic entry. For new players, including SAF producers or importers, the challenge is not international competitiveness. It is securing physical, predictable and affordable access within Brazil to infrastructure that is scarce, capital-intensive and historically controlled by incumbents.
This is why competition, not chemistry, sits at the heart of the SAF debate. Brazil’s two regulators — Agência Nacional do Petróleo, Gás Natural e Biocombustíveis, which oversees fuel production, quality and distribution, and Agência Nacional de Aviação Civil, which regulates airports and aviation services — have begun working in tandem to address domestic access to airport fuel infrastructure. The shared diagnosis is that restrictions at fuel farms and hydrant systems limit competition and slow the entry of new fuels, including SAF, regardless of export ambitions.
One proposal — adopted in some markets — is the creation of a neutral logistics operator to manage fuel infrastructure independently from commercial distribution. While this can improve access in theory, it is not an obvious fit for Brazil. In a market that is already concentrated, a single logistics operator risks becoming a domestic regulated monopoly, adding cost and complexity while merely replacing one gatekeeper with another.
A less disruptive alternative is gaining traction: open, regulated domestic access to existing infrastructure. Rather than inserting a new intermediary, regulators would require fuel farms, pipelines and hydrant systems to operate as essential facilities — with transparent tariffs, non-discriminatory access and rapid dispute resolution. This preserves past investments while turning domestic infrastructure into a platform for new entrants, including SAF suppliers.
International experience shows what is at stake. Airports such as Los Angeles International Airport scaled SAF by opening infrastructure access first, not by waiting for perfect supply conditions. Brazil faces a familiar paradox: rich in feedstock and global ambition, but constrained at home. Aviation’s fuel of the future already exists. Whether it flies in Brazil will depend less on chemistry — and more on domestic access.
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