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Powering air travel with jet fuel derived from municipal solid waste

Nature Sustainability volume 8, pages 1480–1490 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is a promising decarbonization solution for aviation, but its adoption remains below 1% due to high cost. As municipal solid waste (MSW) continues to grow and sustainable disposal remains challenging, converting MSW into SAF offers an attractive pathway to align the goals of zero-waste cities and carbon-neutral aviation, given its reliable availability, low emissions and low cost. Here we evaluate MSW as feedstock for SAF production via industrial-scale gasification and Fischer–Tropsch synthesis data. The life cycle assessment indicates that MSW-based SAF can reduce greenhouse gas intensity by 80–90% compared with conventional jet fuel, with gasification being the primary technical challenge. Incorporating green hydrogen further enhances mitigation, reducing emissions by up to 50% and enabling a reduction of over 170 kg of CO2 per tonne of processed MSW. Globally, MSW-based SAF production could exceed 50 Mt yr−1 (62.5 billion litres), offering a 16% reduction in aviation greenhouse gas emissions. In Europe, the estimated 5.4 Mt yr−1 SAF capacity from this study exceeds the European Union blending mandate and complies with its restriction to non-food and feed feedstocks. Economic analysis indicates that using SAF to meet Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) targets can lead to substantial cost savings, particularly when subsidies are available.

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Fig. 1: Life cycle GHG emission intensity of FT-based MSW-SAF.
Fig. 2: Life cycle GHG emissions and mitigation potentials of FT-based SAF pathways from MSW.
Fig. 3: MSW-SAF potential and its contribution to jet fuel demand across regions and scenarios.
Fig. 4: Comparative costs of CO2 abatement via CORSIA offsets versus MSW-derived SAF in China and the USA under varying offset and SAF price assumptions.

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Data availability

The national- and city-level MSW volume and composition data are available via the World Bank Data Catalog at https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0039597. All data supporting the findings of this study are available within the Article and its Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

M.Z. and Z.J.T. acknowledge the support from National Key R&D Program of China (grant no. 2023YFE0206000). S.Z. acknowledges the support from Research on Carbon Footprint and Sustainability Assessment Method of Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Vehicles (grant no. 2023YFE0109300). C.P.N. acknowledges the support from Energy Foundation China (grant no. G-2311-35278). J.Z. acknowledges the support from the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University. We especially thank Suzhou RunTsing Environmental & Energy Sci-Tech Co., Ltd. for sharing data regarding their industrial level trials using RunTsing Gasifier. We also acknowledge the help by L. Ma and W. Zhang from the Shenhua plant for providing the data and insights on FT technology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Harvard–China Project on Energy, Economy and Environment, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Jingran Zhang, Chris P. Nielsen & Michael B. McElroy

  2. The Salata institute for Climate and Sustainability, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Jingran Zhang

  3. School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Fang Wang, Zhao Jia Ting, Weiguo Dong, Shaojun Zhang, Ye Wu, Ming Zhao & Jiming Hao

  4. State Key Laboratory of Regional Environment and Sustainability, Tsinghua University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Shaojun Zhang, Ye Wu, Ming Zhao & Jiming Hao

  5. State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Sources and Control of Air Pollution Complex, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Shaojun Zhang, Ye Wu & Jiming Hao

  6. Beijing Laboratory of Environmental Frontier Technologies, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Shaojun Zhang, Ye Wu, Ming Zhao & Jiming Hao

  7. Institute for Carbon Neutrality, Tsinghua University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Ming Zhao

  8. Research Institute for Environmental Innovation (Suzhou) Tsinghua, Suzhou, People’s Republic of China

    Ming Zhao

  9. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Michael B. McElroy

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Contributions

J.Z. conceived the work under the guidance of M.B.M., M.Z., Y.W. and J.H. J.Z designed the study, contributed to the life cycle GHG assessment of SAF, MSW-SAF potential analysis and cost estimation of carbon mitigation and wrote the paper. F.W. contributed to the localized data for the life cycle GHG assessment. M.Z., W.D. and Z.J.T. provided the real-world data for gasification and FT process. C.P.N. and S.Z. contributed to in-depth review and editing of the manuscript. All authors reviewed the results and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Ming Zhao or Michael B. McElroy.

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Zhang, J., Wang, F., Ting, Z.J. et al. Powering air travel with jet fuel derived from municipal solid waste. Nat Sustain 8, 1480–1490 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01644-3

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