The final episode of 2025 brings a fresh perspective as The SAF Podcast welcomes its first Academic, Alon Lidor from the National Laboratory of the Rockies (formerly the National Renewable Energy Laboratory).

Alon shares his fascinating journey from aerospace engineering to sustainable aviation fuel research, including his work on solar-driven thermochemical processes at ETH Zurich and his current role at NLR. The conversation explores his groundbreaking research on chemical looping technology for syngas production, which promises to overcome traditional reverse water-gas shift reaction limitations and significantly reduce downstream separation costs in SAF production.

A highlight of the episode is Alon's insights from interviewing over 80 industry stakeholders through the Department of Energy's Energy I-Corps program. He reveals findings about the SAF industry's biggest challenges, including funding and bankability concerns that outweigh technical barriers, and the underestimated complexity of scaling pilot plants to commercial production.

The discussion examines the crucial relationship between academia, national laboratories, and industry in advancing sustainable aviation fuel technologies. Alon explains how national labs like NLR provide essential infrastructure and expertise to help early-stage companies de-risk their technologies, offering capabilities that would be prohibitively expensive for startups to build independently.

Listeners gain valuable insights into techno-economic analysis, regional policy differences between US incentive-based approaches and European mandate-driven frameworks, and the timeline for Alon's three-year research project developing next-generation SAF production technology.

Thank you so much to everyone that has listened over the last year and some exciting things to come in 2026!

To find out more about the SAF Investor London conference check out the website here: https://www.safinvestor.com/event/148588/saf-investor-london-2026-2/