American Airlines and Google Sign Record 35 Million Gallon SAF Certificate Agreement at Chicago O'Hare

American Airlines and Google have announced the largest publicly disclosed sustainable aviation fuel certificate agreement between an airline and a single corporate customer to date, unlocking 35 million gallons or 132 million litres of SAF over three years and delivering nearly 300,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions reductions. Under the agreement, American will purchase and take physical delivery of fuel at Chicago O'Hare International Airport, with the SAF portion produced from waste feedstocks including used cooking oil, while Google will receive the environmental benefits to address its employee business travel emissions through the SAFc Registry's transparent and traceable book-and-claim mechanism. The long-term nature of the agreement enabled American to secure a new long-term SAF offtake with Valero Marketing and Supply Company, demonstrating how corporate demand commitments can unlock supply chain investment beyond the immediate transaction.

 

The Illinois SAF Tax Credit as an Enabling Policy Mechanism

 

The agreement was made possible by Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and the Illinois General Assembly enacting a state-level SAF tax credit that creates the financial conditions needed to bring significant SAF volumes to O'Hare. Governor Pritzker said Illinois is proud to be at the forefront of the clean energy industry and that the agreement demonstrates how the state's nation-leading SAF tax credit can bring industry leaders together while strengthening Illinois' role as a global aviation hub. The role of state-level policy in enabling this record transaction is significant at a moment when federal SAF incentive continuity faces uncertainty, illustrating how sub-national governments can act to attract sustainable aviation investment within their jurisdictions.

The Illinois tax credit provides an important case study for other states and countries evaluating how targeted fiscal incentives can catalyse SAF market development. By reducing the effective cost premium of SAF relative to conventional jet fuel, state tax credits make it commercially viable for airlines to secure long-term offtake agreements and for fuel suppliers to invest in expanding production and distribution infrastructure. American's ability to leverage the Illinois tax credit to secure a three-year Valero supply agreement demonstrates the multiplier effect that well-designed policy incentives can have in translating corporate demand signals into physical supply chain commitments.

 

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The SAFc Registry and Book-and-Claim Architecture

 

The use of the SAFc Registry to transfer environmental benefits from American to Google reflects the growing importance of book-and-claim accounting systems for scaling corporate SAF demand beyond the geographic constraints of physical fuel delivery. In a conventional physical supply model, corporate buyers can only claim SAF benefits from fuel actually loaded onto aircraft they travel on, severely limiting the volume available to non-airline corporate customers. The book-and-claim system decouples the physical fuel delivery from the attribution of environmental benefits, allowing Google to receive certified credits for SAF delivered anywhere in the supply chain regardless of which specific aircraft its employees fly on.

This architecture is particularly important for technology companies with geographically distributed employee travel across hundreds of routes and airlines, where physical fuel delivery at every departure point would be logistically and commercially impossible. The SAFc Registry's transparent and traceable design addresses the integrity concerns that have historically limited confidence in book-and-claim systems, providing the auditability that corporate sustainability teams need to include SAF certificate purchases in their climate reporting with confidence. The American and Google agreement provides a high-profile reference transaction that may accelerate adoption of the SAFc Registry model among other airlines and corporate buyers seeking scalable SAF solutions.

 

Corporate Aviation Decarbonisation and the Demand Signal

 

Jill Blickstein, American's Chief Sustainability Officer, said the agreement is a critical step forward in reducing emissions from operations and that working with leaders like Google who share the commitment to innovation is helping grow SAF demand and support a stronger, more resilient market. Kate Brandt, Google's Chief Sustainability Officer, said the strategic collaboration demonstrates how companies can work together to scale critical sustainability technologies and that the long-term commitment sends a vital demand signal to catalyse investment and bring more SAF to market. The mutual emphasis on demand signalling reflects both companies' awareness that the most significant commercial value of the agreement extends beyond the 300,000 tonne emissions reduction to its effect on SAF investment decisions across the broader industry.

The American Airlines and Google partnership also builds on a broader collaboration between the two companies, including a 2025 contrail avoidance trial that integrated contrail prediction into American's flight planning processes and achieved a statistically significant 62 percent reduction in contrail formation. This multi-dimensional partnership across both SAF and contrail avoidance positions the two companies as leaders in comprehensive aviation emissions reduction rather than focusing on a single lever. Contrail warming is estimated to contribute significantly to aviation's total climate impact beyond its direct carbon dioxide emissions, making the contrail avoidance work a meaningful complement to the SAF volume committed under the new agreement.

 

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Outlook for Corporate SAF Demand and Market Development

 

The record scale of the American and Google agreement and the enabling role of the Illinois tax credit provide important signals for the broader SAF market at a time when IATA has warned that 2026 SAF production will represent only 0.8 percent of aviation fuel use. Corporate demand commitments of this magnitude, backed by credible registry infrastructure and state-level policy support, represent exactly the type of market development that SAF producers need to justify investment in new production capacity. Whether the American and Google model can be replicated at scale across the corporate travel market will depend on the development of SAFc registry infrastructure, the proliferation of state and national SAF tax credit programmes and the willingness of other major corporate travel buyers to make multi-year commitments at comparable volumes.

Sustained growth in corporate SAFc demand alongside airline procurement commitments would accelerate the market development needed to close the gap between current SAF production volumes and the levels required to meet ReFuelEU Aviation mandates and the aviation industry's net zero commitments. The combination of waste-based feedstock sourcing, transparent book-and-claim accounting and state-level policy enablement demonstrated by the American and Google transaction provides a template that can be adapted for other aviation hub markets with appropriate policy infrastructure. The next phase of SAF market development will be defined by how effectively this template can be scaled across more airline-corporate buyer combinations and more geographic markets.

 

Source: American Airlines