General Index & Atoba Energy Announce Partnership to Unlock SAF Investments & Accelerate Supply Growth of New Advanced Sustainable Aviation Fuels Through Energy Benchmarks

General Index and ATOBA Energy announce partnership to unlock SAF investments & accelerate supply growth of new advanced sustainable aviation fuels through energy benchmarks

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--General Index (GX) and ATOBA Energy are excited to announce their strategic partnership, bringing a brand-new vision of how Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) benchmarks are built. SAF indexes need to be tailored to the unique cost profiles of diverse production technologies, delivering the right information required to scale the SAF industry for aviation goal of net zero by 2050.

>> In Other News: Transforming Sunlight Into efuel: Skytree Stratus Selected by Forschungszentrum Jülich for Innovative Power-to-X Research Project

"Creating transparent and technology-specific SAF price benchmarks is critical to scaling sustainable aviation fuel markets"

For more than half a century, the aviation industry has relied on traditional price reporting services to manage exposure to price risks in the fossil jet fuel market. But the SAF revolution demands a new approach. Unlike traditional fuels, SAF can be produced from a wide variety of certified technologies, each with distinct feedstocks, costs, CO₂ reduction capabilities and production scalability – and, at the end, producing similar drop-in aviation fuels. A one-size-fits-all SAF index isn’t fungible in this complex emerging market.

ATOBA Energy recognises that the immediate hurdle to overcome is unlocking investment and building confidence in bankable long-term offtake agreements for new production facilities. A key enabler to overcoming this challenge is bringing transparency and a level playing field to the industry through the creation of new SAF price indexes, developed by General Index. Each index will be designed to reflect the unique cost profile of the diverse SAF technologies and aggregated to create a benchmark that aligns with regulatory frameworks, regional nuances and market needs.

Neil Bradford, CEO & Founder, General Index, said: "Creating transparent and technology-specific SAF price benchmarks is critical to scaling sustainable aviation fuel markets. We’re already a benchmark partner to the European Commission for the official 2024 Aviation Fuels Reference Prices for ReFuelEU Aviation. Now, by partnering with ATOBA Energy, we’re helping to build the foundational infrastructure needed to attract investment, support offtake agreements, and accelerate the aviation industry’s transition to net zero."

Arnaud Namer, CEO & Co-Founder, ATOBA Energy, said: "Unlocking investment in sustainable aviation fuel starts with transparency, market confidence, and trusted pricing tools. That’s why we’re proud to partner with General Index to introduce a new generation of SAF price benchmarks tailored to the real cost structures of emerging SAF technologies. These benchmarks are critical to ensuring SAF is competitively priced for airlines—an advantage we deliver thanks to our diversified portfolio of best-in-class SAF producers and long-term offtake aggregation strategy."

About General Index

General Index (GX) is a benchmark provider for the commodities markets. GX produces over 4,200 daily price benchmarks in crude oil, refined products, and energy transition markets. Our daily energy prices are calculated algorithmically based on thousands of trades collated from +250 data partners, using consistent methodology and a compliant approach aligned with IOSCO and FCA requirements. We use a rigorous and consistent methodology frameworks to produce all our indexes, augmented by methodology factsheets outlining the specifications of each index.

GX’s global aviation solution includes an extensive offering to the aviation industry of over 300 indexes, covering spot prices, histories and forward curves. Benchmarks are provided for the global fossil jet fuel markets, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) sector, and voluntary and compliance emissions markets, including CORSIA. First-generation SAF prices reflect production costs, nascent spot markets, and freight-derived pricing captures trade flow dynamics from key supply centres to demand destinations. We also assess a range of feedstocks relevant to SAF production, including UCO, tallow and ethanol. This service is accessible via the web-based platform GX Go and API. For further information contact [email protected].

About ATOBA Energy

ATOBA is the midstream Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) aggregator focused on accelerating the aviation industry's energy transition through solving the financial dilemma between airlines and producers. ATOBA provides long-term SAF contracts to airlines and jet-fuel resellers at optimized market SAF pricing indexes. The company brings high security and competitiveness to the SAF supply chain for its airline partners via offtake from diversified producers and technologies, as well as best-in-class sector expertise. Simultaneously, ATOBA’s aggregation strategy allows the SAF industry to scale by providing producers with long-term offtake agreements that support their Final Investment Decisions for their SAF production plants. For further information contact [email protected].