By Kristýna Matoulková, Manager SAF Registry, Sustainability Programs, IATA
Over the last few years, the global SAF market has made steady progress. Production capacity is growing, new participants are entering the ecosystem, and book-and-claim has emerged as the mechanism that allows SAF supply and demand to connect beyond the limitations of physical fuel logistics. By decoupling physical fuel from its environmental attributes, SAF produced in one part of the world can support decarbonization efforts in another, creating an opportunity for growth that would not be possible via physical supply chains alone.
Yet growth brings new responsibilities. As more SAF registries emerge to facilitate book-and-claim and serve different stakeholders, geographies, and market needs, ensuring the integrity of SAF environmental attributes becomes increasingly important. The diversity of registries is a sign of a maturing market, but it also raises the possibility that the same SAF environmental attribute could be recorded in more than one system. Even if such cases are rare, they could undermine confidence in book-and-claim and the credibility of SAF claims. The challenge for the industry is therefore straightforward: ensuring that registries can work together to prevent duplicate records and safeguard market trust.
The good news is that this challenge can be solved. Over the past year, IATA, CADO, 4AIR, and 123Carbon have worked together to develop a practical interoperability framework that allows registries to identify potential duplicate SAF environmental attributes before they are issued in multiple systems. Rather than creating a new central registry, the approach enables independent registries to exchange a standardized set of data and perform automated cross-checks against each other to reduce the risk of duplicate SAF environmental attributes. This framework has already been implemented in a live operating environment by the CADO SAF Registry, the Assure SAF Registry, and 123Carbon, proving that interoperability is not just a theoretical concept but that it can be implemented in practice today.
While interoperability may sound like a technical topic, its significance is much broader. It is about creating confidence in each SAF claim. The interoperability collaboration between the three registries demonstrates that independent systems can work together to strengthen trust in book-and-claim. However, the real value will come as more registries participate, and the framework, which was designed to be open and inclusive, expands across the SAF ecosystem. As SAF markets continue to grow, interoperability will play an important role in ensuring that confidence in SAF claims remains strong.
