The binding constraint on sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) supply for CORSIA's first phase is authorisation — the slow, fragmented approval of fuels and producers — rather than any lack of ambition from airlines, Air Cargo Week reports.

That framing cuts against the prevailing narrative in air cargo and passenger aviation alike. Carriers, forwarders and shippers have spent the past two years hearing that the gap between SAF demand and supply reflects insufficient will or unwillingness to pay premiums. The evidence, according to the report, points elsewhere: projects and fuel pathways are queueing for regulatory sign-off faster than regulators and certification bodies can clear them.

For air cargo operators, the distinction matters commercially. CORSIA Phase 1 runs from 2024 through the end of 2026 and covers international emissions on a voluntary state-by-state basis, with offsetting obligations calculated against a 2019 baseline, reduced to 85% of that level. Airlines flying between participating states must demonstrate compliance, and SAF claimed against CORSIA obligations must come from approved pathways under recognised sustainability certification schemes. If eligible fuel cannot be authorised in time, carriers face a starker choice: buy carbon credits at market prices, or absorb compliance shortfalls.

The authorisation bottleneck therefore functions as a hidden cost driver. Every month a producer waits for pathway approval or a plant waits for sustainability certification is a month in which CORSIA-eligible molecules stay out of the market, tightening the pool of compliant fuel and pushing airlines toward offsets — a cheaper instrument, but one that delivers no in-sector emissions reduction and carries growing reputational risk with cargo customers setting their own Scope 3 targets.

Forwarders and shippers should read the constraint through the lens of book-and-claim availability. Corporate SAF programmes in air cargo — increasingly bundled into forwarder green products sold to shippers with emissions commitments — depend on the same authorised supply pool. Slow approvals upstream translate directly into fewer claimable volumes downstream, and into harder-to-verify claims in customer sustainability reporting.

The report's core message to policymakers and regulators is implicit but sharp: ambition is already there on the demand side. Airlines have committed to SAF offtakes, and cargo customers are funding programmes. What the system lacks is administrative throughput — the capacity of certification schemes and national authorities to validate feedstocks, production pathways and lifecycle emissions claims at the pace the phase-one timeline demands.

The timing question is now the commercial one. Phase 1 compliance cycles are already running, and volumes authorised late in the window deliver less abatement value per unit of investment, both for carriers managing offset-versus-fuel economics and for producers sizing plants against demand that may materialise only after the compliance period closes. Producers stuck in the authorisation queue also face financing friction, since lenders price regulatory risk into project capital.

Unless authorisation throughput accelerates, the report suggests, the binding constraint will persist into the next compliance cycle — keeping CORSIA-eligible SAF scarce, offset demand elevated, and the gap between stated ambition and delivered abatement wide.