Brussels Airport announced that it will incentivise use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) by covering up to 80% of airlines’ additional costs using sustainable fuel with backing from the Belgian government’s special financial contribution.

The SAF incentive will be available to all passenger and cargo airlines, for both short-haul and long-haul flights departing from Brussels Airport during 2024.

The SAF incentive amounts to a maximum of €200,000 per airline, allowing them to cover up to 80% of the additional cost of using the sustainable fuel. 

“Increasing the use of SAF as an aviation fuel is a key element in the aviation sector’s ambition to reduce its CO2 emissions to zero by 2050,” said Arnaud Feist, CEO, Brussels Airport Company. “The SAF incentive programme is one of the measures that Brussels Airport Company wanted to take to accelerate the sustainable development of aviation and promote the use of sustainable aviation fuel. … we have expressed the ambition to aim for 5% SAF on total kerosene use by airlines at Brussels Airport by 2026.”

The Brussels Airport announced the first delivery of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) via the NATO pipeline in 2023. However, high price posed a major challenge for SAF adoption by airlines.

“Just as the aviation sector must use every means at its disposal to reduce its ecological footprint, we must, in Belgium and across Europe, use all the levers available to accelerate this movement. Thanks to this unique support mechanism, next year we will encourage companies to opt for SAF rather than fossil fuel: this is one concrete way, among others, of testing this means of reducing CO2 emissions in the aviation sector on a large scale,” said Georges Gilkinet, Belgium’s minister of mobility.