Over the past two months, Project SkyPower has consulted extensively with its members and stakeholders across the aviation value chain to develop a shared industry position on how the European Commission’s double-sided auction (DSA) pilot for e-SAF should be designed to be successful.
In its November 2025 Sustainable Transport Investment Plan (STIP), the European Commission announced the launch of an e-SAF DSA pilot in 2026.
This is a major opportunity for Europe’s e-SAF market. Double-sided auctions have the potential to address one of the main barriers preventing first-of-a-kind projects from reaching Final Investment Decision (FID): the mismatch between producers’ need for long-term revenue certainty and offtakers’ shorter-term procurement cycles, as well as their reluctance to commit to long-term agreements in a still nascent market.
Project SkyPower’s members agreed that the DSA pilot will be successful if it:
- Unlocks at least one FID for a commercial-scale European e-SAF project in 2026 or early 2027;
- Creates sufficient market price transparency to stimulate deal-making outside the auction;
- Demonstrates the capital efficiency of DSAs as a public support mechanism; and
- Paves the way for larger-scale, EU-led auctions informed by the pilot’s learnings.
To support these objectives, SkyPower has published ten industry-backed recommendations across three areas: eligibility criteria, auction design, and operational set-up.
These call for:
- Eligibility criteria that prioritise mature, European, commercial-scale e-SAF projects capable of reaching commercial operations in 2030–2031, while limiting demand-side participation to entities linked to ReFuelEU Aviation obligations;
- An auction design that maximises capital efficiency while giving bidders sufficient flexibility and protection to participate with confidence; and
- An operational set-up aligned with current infrastructure access that maximises participation while ensuring tangible benefits for funding Member States.