Why does eSAF live or die on the electricity bill? Alex Zorniger of Power to Hydrogen (P2H2) explains electrolysers in plain English, and why they matter to power-to-liquid SAF.

In this episode we cover:

• Why hydrogen makes up 50 to 60% of the cost of a gallon of eSAF, and why electricity is around 70% of that hydrogen cost
• SOEC vs PEM vs alkaline vs AEM: What do these all mean, how each electrolyser works, where each one wins, and what the market share looks like today
• Why intermittent renewables favour membrane-based electrolysers, and why SOEC suits steady sources like geothermal
• A quick calculation any developer can use to test whether a project’s hydrogen cost stacks up
• What bankability means for new electrolyser technology, and why banks want proven scale
• How to tackle the the challenge of performance guarantees.
• Why pressure and purity matter when integrating hydrogen into the SAF production process

Whether you’re a developer, investor or newcomer to eSAF, this is the essential guide to the technology at the heart of power-to-liquids.

SAF Investor London returns on 23 to 24 February 2027, bringing together the investors and stakeholders scaling sustainable aviation fuel finance. Find out more about the conference here: https://www.safinvestor.com/event/149733/london-2027/

On this week's episode of The SAF Podcast we welcome back Nova Pangaea Technologies (NPT) for the first time since 2023. 10 months into his role as CEO, Stewart Stewart, we discuss what attracted him to SAF and get some updates from NPT.

We cover a variety of topics including:

• Why energy ventures fail: it’s rarely the chemistry, it’s the handoffs between science, engineering, finance and the first commercial plant.
• A reminder of NPT's REFNOVA process which turns forestry and agricultural waste into second-generation sugars and biochar. The sugars become ethanol, which goes to SAF via alcohol-to-jet, while the biochar locks carbon into soil, making the fuel carbon negative on a lifecycle basis.
• The campaign two at the Wilton demonstration plant in Teesside delivered more than three days of stable, continuous operation, validated externally by Fichtner. His verdict: “boring is beautiful”, since every uneventful hour turns investor imagination into operating data.
• We discuss what is next up on the horizon as the NPT scale up continues.
• Project Speedbird, with IAG/British Airways and LanzaJet, gives the company a clear route to market and a single killer app. Nova Pangaea provides the ethanol, LanzaJet the alcohol-to-jet technology, and IAG the offtake.
• On LanzaJet’s Freedom Pines facility, he’s watching closely but notes Nova Pangaea has fallback options: other alcohol-to-jet plants and road fuels
• Stewart argues the industry should reward emissions reduction, not just litres produced. Under the UK SAF mandate, Nova Pangaea can monetise its biochar sequestration through additional SAF certificates, delivering two to three times the carbon impact of other fuels.
• Sceptical of shipping feedstock around the world: with around 80% of European used cooking oil and tallow imported from Southeast Asia Stewart highlights HEFA supply security and sees book-and-claim as the more honest decarbonisation route.
• Finally we touch on NPT's continual fundraising and how much time this ends up taking from Stewart's schedule.

Check out the full episode to find out all the details.

This week's episode of The SAF Podcast steps beyond SAF to ask a bigger question: what do today's energy shocks mean for investors? Jeffrey Altman, Senior Advisor, Finadvice joins Oscar and suggests the real crisis isn't the price of energy but the price of dependence.

Oscar and Jeff discuss:

• Why this energy crisis differs from past ones, and why there's no quick way to decouple our existing energy supply chain reliance.
• Hybrid war, and why investors should start pricing in downtime.
• The shift from asset-light bets to capital-intensive investment in domestic manufacturing, alternative fuels and critical infrastructure.
• Why policy certainty is the biggest lever, and which governments are sending the right signals.
• What defence buyers actually want from SAF: reliable, commercially competitive fuel, not subsidy.
• How reliance on Asian supply is pushing the case for onshore and nearshore production.
• Why family offices could be the Medicis of the next innovation wave.

Check out this episode if you want to to hear a deeper discussion around current energy constraints and how to restructure them.