🌱 Environment & EcologyMAINS · GS3.14 · GS3.9

SAF-blended jet fuel brought under the ATF Control Order

An amendment folds Sustainable Aviation Fuel into India's aviation-fuel marketing law, putting blending targets and a quality definition behind the country's CORSIA preparation.

What happened

The Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas has amended the Aviation Turbine Fuel (Regulation of Marketing) Order, 2001 — the ATF Control Order — to bring jet fuel blended with Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) within its regulatory ambit.
The enabling notification is dated 17 April 2026; the release announcing it carries the date 23 April 2026.
Until now the Order defined ATF only as a petroleum-based fuel meeting BIS specifications. The amendment widens that definition to cover SAF used with conventional jet fuel.
Two routes are now recognised: SAF co-processed alongside ATF as per IS 1571, and SAF conforming to IS 17081 that is blended with ATF meeting IS 1571.
The Government has announced indicative SAF blending targets for international flights of 1% in 2027, 2% in 2028 and 5% in 2030.
The move aligns Indian fuel regulation with the start of the mandatory phase of ICAO's CORSIA scheme in 2027, under which SAF use lowers an airline's carbon-offset obligation.

Background & context

Aviation is one of the harder sectors to decarbonise. Aircraft need a high-energy-density liquid fuel, and battery-electric or hydrogen propulsion remains some distance from large commercial use. The practical near-term lever is therefore to change the fuel itself rather than the engine — and that is exactly what Sustainable Aviation Fuel does. SAF consists of specially processed aviation-grade hydrocarbons that are chemically similar to conventional jet fuel and fully compatible with existing aircraft engines. Because it is a "drop-in" fuel, it can be blended with petroleum-based ATF and burned in today's fleet without engine modification, which is the central reason regulators worldwide are reaching for it first.

The instrument being amended is the Aviation Turbine Fuel (Regulation of Marketing) Order, 2001, commonly called the ATF Control Order. It is a control order — a piece of subordinate legislation — issued by the Central Government to regulate the marketing of jet fuel in India. Its earlier text recognised only petroleum-derived ATF meeting the prescribed Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) specification. That definition created a gap: a renewable, partly bio-based fuel did not cleanly fit the legal description of "ATF", which made it awkward to mandate or even formally permit blended supply at airports. The 23 April 2026 amendment closes that gap by expanding the definition so that SAF — whether co-processed or blended — is treated as part of the regulated aviation-fuel stream.

The timing is driven by the international climate regime for aviation. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the United Nations specialised agency for civil aviation headquartered in Montreal, runs CORSIA — the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation. CORSIA requires participating airlines to offset the growth in CO₂ emissions from international flights above a baseline, and its mandatory phase begins in 2027. Crucially, the use of eligible SAF reduces the volume of offsets an airline must buy. A country that wants its carriers to meet CORSIA cheaply therefore has a direct incentive to build a domestic SAF supply chain and the legal scaffolding to deliver it. India's amendment, and the indicative 2027–2030 blending pathway it accompanies, is that scaffolding.

SAF also sits inside India's wider biofuels and net-zero agenda. India has pursued ethanol blending in petrol and biodiesel/compressed-biogas programmes for road transport for years; SAF extends the same feedstock-to-fuel logic — crops, biogenic residues and waste — into aviation, the segment that ethanol blending cannot reach. It connects upward to India's announced goal of net-zero emissions by 2070 and to the sourcing of feedstock from agricultural and municipal waste streams, giving the policy a rural-economy and circular-economy dimension as well as a climate one.

For Prelims

Instrument amended: the Aviation Turbine Fuel (Regulation of Marketing) Order, 2001 — the "ATF Control Order" — a Central Government control order regulating jet-fuel marketing.
Amending notification: dated 17 April 2026; announced by the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas on 23 April 2026.
What SAF is: Sustainable Aviation Fuel — aviation-grade hydrocarbons, chemically similar to ATF, fully engine-compatible (a "drop-in" fuel), derived from renewable feedstocks: crops, biogenic residues and waste materials.
Standards in the definition: SAF co-processed with ATF per IS 1571; SAF per IS 17081 blended with ATF meeting IS 1571. (IS 1571 is the jet-fuel specification; IS 17081 is the SAF specification.)
India's indicative blending targets (international flights): 1% (2027) → 2% (2028) → 5% (2030).
CORSIA: Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation, run by ICAO; mandatory phase from 2027; SAF use reduces an airline's offset requirement.
Comparative set (global mandates): EU — 2% (2025), 6% (2030), up to 70% (2050); UK — 2% (2025), 10% (2030), 22% (2040); Japan — 10% by 2030; Singapore — 1% from 2026 rising to 3–5% by 2030. India's 1%→5% pathway is on the gentler end of this group.
ICAO itself: a specialised agency of the United Nations for international civil aviation, headquartered in Montreal, Canada — distinct from IATA, which is the airlines' trade body, not a UN agency.
What it is NOT: the amendment is not a binding mandate with penalties — the 2027–2030 percentages are described as indicative targets, not legally enforced quotas. SAF is not a synthetic non-hydrocarbon fuel and is not hydrogen or electric propulsion — it is a drop-in hydrocarbon. And the targets apply to international, not domestic, flights. Co-processing (SAF made within a refinery's existing process) is also not the same as blending (finished SAF mixed with finished ATF) — the Order now covers both.

For UPSC: SAF is now regulated under the ATF Control Order, 2001; ICAO's CORSIA turns mandatory in 2027, and India targets indicative SAF blending of 1% (2027), 2% (2028) and 5% (2030) on international flights — covering both IS 17081 blended SAF and IS 1571 co-processed SAF.

Why it matters

The change addresses a concrete problem: India's airlines face a hard international compliance deadline in 2027, yet the country had no legal definition under which blended SAF could be marketed as regulated aviation fuel. Without that definition, building a domestic SAF supply chain — refineries, blending infrastructure, quality assurance — would have rested on uncertain ground. Folding SAF into the ATF Control Order gives suppliers, oil marketing companies and airports a clear, standardised product to produce, certify and sell, and gives the Government a lever it can later tighten from "indicative" toward "mandatory" as supply matures.

It also matters for energy security and the rural economy. SAF feedstocks — crop residues, used cooking oil, municipal and biogenic waste — are domestically available, so a SAF industry substitutes imported crude-derived jet fuel with home-grown inputs while creating a market for agricultural waste that is otherwise burned. The climate payoff is real but bounded: at 1–5% blending the near-term emissions cut is modest, which is why the pathway is designed to scale. The honest caveat the policy itself implies is the supply constraint — SAF is currently far more expensive than conventional ATF and feedstock availability is limited, so gentle indicative targets reflect what the supply chain can realistically deliver rather than what the climate goal might demand.

For Mains

Anchor

An answer on decarbonising hard-to-abate transport can be built around the SAF–ATF Control Order amendment as the Indian policy instrument that operationalises aviation's energy transition ahead of CORSIA 2027.

Substantiation

Use the concrete pathway — 1% (2027), 2% (2028), 5% (2030) for international flights — and the comparative mandates (EU up to 70% by 2050, UK 22% by 2040, Japan 10% by 2030) as data showing where India sits in the global SAF ladder.

Exemplification

Cite SAF as an example of a "drop-in" renewable fuel that decarbonises an existing fleet without new engines — the same feedstock-to-fuel logic India already applies in ethanol blending, now extended to aviation.

Problematisation

Flag the gap the policy admits: targets are only indicative, SAF is costlier than conventional ATF, and feedstock supply is limited — so the climate gain at 1–5% blending is modest and scale-up depends on building a domestic supply chain.

Way-forward

Argue for converting indicative targets into a graded mandate once supply matures, incentivising domestic SAF refining from agri-residue and waste, and aligning the blending pathway with the net-zero-by-2070 commitment.

Position

The Government's stated stance: regulate first (bring SAF under the ATF Control Order), set an indicative trajectory aligned to CORSIA, and let domestic supply scale before any binding obligation.

Deploys into: conservation, pollution and the energy transition (GS3.14); infrastructure and the energy sector — aviation fuel and indigenous biofuels (GS3.9); and India's engagement with international institutions and climate commitments (CORSIA/ICAO, net-zero 2070).

Same day, same sector: the Civil Aviation Ministry's hub-and-spoke / International Aviation Hub Strategy review at Delhi Airport (PRID 2255045) — the demand-side counterpart to this fuel-side reform.
Entity hub: Sustainable Aviation Fuel · ATF Control Order, 2001 · CORSIA / ICAO.
Theme: Environment & Ecology — energy transition and decarbonisation.

Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas · 2026-04-23 · PRID 2255021 · PIB source ↗