Green Markets Day 2026 | Expanding Sustainable Aviation Fuel Markets in Asia

Kim Carnahan, CEO of GMA, was joined by Frederick Teo, CEO of GenZero, and Seow Hui Tan, CEO of SAFCo, to announce the next phase of Green Fuel Forward, an initiative launched by GenZero with the World Economic Forum to accelerate the deployment of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). GMA and SAFCo are joining the initiative’s steering committee, bringing GMA’s buyers alliance experience to the Asia Pacific region, where much of aviation’s future growth will happen, and moving Green Fuel Forward from raising awareness to getting companies to sign contracts.

See below for a full transcript.

TRANSCRIPT

KIM CARNAHAN:
We are here, I am here again, and we are here together to talk about decarbonizing aviation. Decarbonizing aviation is, in fact, a global challenge. It is something that requires us to be working on the creation of credible SAF markets all over the world. And although, of course, the Sustainable Aviation Buyers Alliance is in many ways my baby, and we are incredibly proud of the work that SABA has done, we have to be honest that SABA, to date, has had its membership primarily focused in the United States and Europe. And we can’t wait to grow demand all across the world.

And so we’ve been talking with our partners on the stage about how we can take advantage of the incredible opportunity that the APAC region is when it comes to growing aviation and sustainable aviation fuel. And we’re here today to talk about, you know, how we’re going to together take advantage of that incredible frontier for aviation growth. And expanding on the progress we’ve made through SABA, staying very well coordinated with SABA, but reacting to and reflecting on the regional specificities of the APAC region. That’s why we’re here today.

I’m here with Frederick Teo from GenZero, the CEO of GenZero, and Seow Hui Tan from SAFCo. And I’m going to hand it over to Fred to actually tell us, tell you about our news today.

FREDERICK TEO:
Thanks a lot, Kim. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for having us. So, Green Fuel Forward. The Green Fuel Forward was an initiative that we launched a year ago together with the World Economic Forum. The entire idea here really was thinking about how we could accelerate the deployment of SAF to help with the decarbonization of aviation.

Now, we know that SAF today is expensive, right? It’s gotten more expensive with what’s happening in the Middle East. Now, but with this green premium, we’ve got to be able to address it for a couple of reasons. One, we’ve got to make it simply much more economically affordable for the airline industry. Two, we have got to also encourage governments to be able to mandate for the use of SAF. If it becomes extremely expensive and is economically difficult and challenging, then governments are somewhat deterred from imposing an ambitious mandate and to push through much more ambitious policy.

So how do we address this? So we thought that it might be useful to be able to get corporates to pay a little bit, right, and defray the cost of SAF by buying things like SAF certificates. Now, it started as an idea within GenZero because for us, we address about 5% of our aviation emissions by purchasing SAF credits. Now, as a small company, could you do 10%, 20%, 30%? You could do a lot more. But that’s not the point. We can’t scale that way. So we’ve got to encourage corporates to be able to do whatever they can.

Now, that leads us to then think about how to get WEF to convene a grouping in one year of about nearly 50 organizations that encompasses not just the aviation industry and corporates, but also the fuel providers. We have to move on to the next phase. And the next phase is going beyond just telling people about SAF, how do you purchase SAF certs, but now about getting action, getting people to actually purchase, spend money, get things done.

And as I was sitting down on the floor just now, on the audience, I noticed that there are lots of alliances that GMA has been responsible for. And everything ends with ZEMBA, SABA, SCoBA, GABA. GABA. GABA. Is that GABA? Right. So it’s a buyer’s alliance.

But I think it is important to then think, okay, how do we contribute out of Asia? And why is that important? To 2045, Asia is likely to purchase something like 19 over thousand planes. And that is because about 40 over percent of aviation growth is going to come from the Asia Pacific. There is no sustainable global aviation without decarbonizing aviation in the Asia Pac.

So building on the capabilities of GMA, right, in doing a lot of all these buyer’s alliances, and being able to activate buyers to actually do something, we are delighted to be able to partner with GMA in the first instance to bring some of their capabilities to Asia. And to activate that market as well.

And on top of that, we are also welcoming SAFCo to the SteerCo for GFF. Because SAFCo is going to be responsible for purchasing lots of SAF out of Changi Airport. And on the back of that purchase, if we are able to drive more corporate spending in, then it will end up catalyzing even more demand for SAF out of Changi Airport. And that is, I guess, the flywheel and the theory of change.

And so we are very delighted, now as we move to the second phase of GFF, to welcome GMA and SAFCo to the SteerCo. And maybe I pass now to Seow Hui to explain a little bit more.

SEOW HUI TAN:
Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks, Fred, for the introduction. Like what Fred has actually shared, SAFCo was actually set up a year ago to operationalize the Singapore SAF policy. Some of you on the floor may have heard that Singapore is actually implementing the SAF policy starting from January 1st, 2027. So we are set up to help deliver the Singapore national SAF ambition. But all the infrastructure, the process, the system, the governance that we are going to be built for the Singapore government can be leveraged to scale a credible voluntary demand market.

And we are very excited to be partnering with GMA, given all the experience and expertise that GMA has in setting up all the different buyer alliances across hard-to-abate sectors. And of course, SABA being the first one in aviation, and of course, GenZero. Thank you for the pivotal role that you have actually done to start up the Green Fuel Forward initiative that actually given the stage for us today to move to the next phase. SAFCo is very proud and I’m actually very happy to actually participate in the next phase of GFF to really making this a reality.

Like what Fred has actually mentioned, we can’t just do this alone. We need to do this in partnership. All the expertise and all the experience that is actually done in U.S. and done in Europe can be replicated in Asia Pacific. And we know that similar to what Fred has also described, without decarbonizing Asia Pacific in terms of aviation, there is no decarbonization of aviation globally. So hopefully we look towards the next step together with the two partners here to really enabling the decarbonization of aviation. Thank you.

KIM CARNAHAN:
And I’ll just say one more thing before we pass to our next panel. We are very excited to take what we’ve learned through SABA and work with our partners. I just wanted to add my excitement specifically to have these two partners in this region.

In particular, GFF has already done a lot of work with GenZero and WEF to capacity build in the region to get a lot of companies involved and interested in SAF. And the next step is really getting them to sign contracts. And that’s what we’ve had so much experience doing through SABA. SABA is and will remain a global initiative, but in this region in particular, you know, diving deep into the regional specifics and finding a way to engage with companies in the region that we have not had access to before and get them interested in growing that demand and working together to grow the SAF market in Asia is something that is very exciting to us and what we’re so grateful to have the opportunity to work with our partners going forward.