Aviation now has a small but clearly structured set of dedicated decarbonisation funds. What began as a handful of pioneering vehicles has gradually evolved into a distinct niche investment segment: ring-fenced pools of capital, branded and governed as funds, created to accelerate SAF and other decarbonisation enabling technologies.
This is Ishka SAVi’s inaugural attempt at capturing these funds and their investments. A second report containing an interactive breakdown of the funds’ activities will follow in the coming days.
Overview
| Fund name | Launch date | Sponsor(s) | Instrument | Focus | Ticket size/ commitments | Investment examples |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| oneworld BEV Fund | 17th September 2025 | oneworld member airlines + Breakthrough Energy Ventures (fund manager) | Venture Capital | Next-gen SAF technologies (cost-down + scale) | $150m (initial close) | As of November 2025, the fund had "identified some opportunities," with a pipeline of "series A, series B, mainly earlier stage" projects, according to Oneworld Alliance director of sustainability and Innovation Matt Ridley |
| United Airlines Ventures Sustainable Flight Fund | 21st February 2023 | United Airlines Ventures (33%) + corporate partners | Venture Capital | Aviation decarbonisation tech incl. SAF, hydrogen/logistics, and related climate tech | $200m+ commitments | Twelve (PtL SAF), Heirloom (DAC), Banyu Carbon (Ocean carbon capture), OXCCU (PtL SAF), Verne (Hydrogen storage), Electric Hydrogen (Hydrogen supply chain), Koloma (Hydrogen supply chain) |
| Sustainable Aviation Fuel Financing Alliance (SAFFA) investment fund | 23rd July 2024 | Burnham Sterling Asset Management + corporate partners | Equity fund | Technologically mature SAF-producing projects | $200 million | Crysalis Biosciences ( to upgrade an ethanol plant in Illinois for SAF and biochemicals) |
| Qantas-Airbus Sustainable Aviation Fund | 30th May 2023 | Qantas & Airbus | Investment fund | SAF, Nature-based carbon projects that meet internal quality and integrity requirements, Carbon removal technologies & projects, and operational efficiency & waste reduction initiatives. | $283 million, A$15m committed to Climate Tech Partners (CTP) in 2025 | Wheatbelt Connect, SAFFA, Silva Carbon Origination Fund, New Zealand's biofuel refinery at Marsden Point, Climate Tech Partners |
| Emirates Aviation Sustainability Fund | 11th May 2024 | Emirates | Investment fund/Grants | Fous on R&D | $200m | Aviation Impact Accelerator |
| Luxaviation Go-to-Zero Investment Fund | 14th December 2023 | Luxaviation | Investment fund | e-SAF | $55m | N/A |
| SkiesFifty sustainable aviation fund (formerly Clear Sky) | 23rd July 2024 | Undisclosed | Investment Company | SAF, carbon removal, alternative propulsion, renewable energy | "hundreds of millions" | Firefly, Maeve, Hydrobe (carbon capture), Gigablue (carbon removals), HiiROC (hydrogen), Frontline BioEnergy (waste to energy tech) |
| Source: Public announcements | ||||||
Click here to download the table including additional notes and sources
Aviation decarbonisation funds emerged from 2023, aligning with the progressive formalisation of SAF ambition through mandates and official blending trajectories. Many of these efforts are catalytic investments by companies in the aviation sector or adjacent, complementing long-term SAF offtake agreements, since declining.
Despite a common (accelerating the sector’s transition), Ishka SAVi has identified a few different types of funds.
- Manager-led platforms: funds that look and behave like institutional investment vehicles, with an external manager and a portfolio logic. The Oneworld BEV Fund fits this mould, as well as SkiesFifty through its positioning as an investment platform. These vehicles are designed to build portfolios, attract wide capital, and create a repeatable investment pipeline.
- Roadmap-supportive: Meanwhile, some funds appear to be made up of capital ring-fenced primarily to advance the sponsor’s own decarbonisation interests. The Qantas Climate Fund sits here, as does the Emirates Sustainability Fund (structured more like R&D/grants), and possibly Luxaviation’s Go-to-Zero investment fund.
- Partnered industry models: Sitting between the two other types, these are designed to bring the sector’s wider value chain into risk-taking. United Airline Ventures’s (UAV) Sustainable Flight Fund is the most recognisable, pulling in OEMs, corporates, banks, and leasing entities into the same capital pool to build optionality over future decarbonisation pathways. The Airbus-supported Sustainable Aviation Fuel Financing Alliance (SAFFA) could also be considered in this category, with an asset-manager led structure and a wide investor base, but a clear focus on SAF only and mature projects.
Where the money is going
A closer look at UAV’s fund
Efforts to brand many of these as “SAF funds” are correct in spirit, but the disclosed deployments to date show a narrower reality. Rather than investing primarily in SAF refining projects, most of the early capital deployed by these funds is clustering around the systems and technologies that will determine how SAF will be produced and scaled: clean hydrogen, captured CO2, conversion pathways, and carbon management.
UAV’s Sustainable Flight Fund offers a good example. In June 2023, the fund backed UK start-up OXCCU as it raised a Series A round, betting on a pathway to synthesise SAF from captured CO2 and green hydrogen. In October 2023, it participated in Electric Hydrogen’s Series C financing (an electrolyser startup), with the investment framed explicitly around driving down the cost of green hydrogen, for a critical enabling feedstock for power-to-liquid (PtL) SAF, in particular.
Through 2024, the fund’s disclosed activity reads like a map of the technological bottlenecks constraining SAF scale-up. In February 2024, UAV arm was cited as an investor in Koloma’s $245 million Series B, supporting “geologic” (natural) hydrogen exploration –a potential low-cost hydrogen source. That same month, UAV participated in Banyu Carbon’s $6.5 million seed round, backing a Direct Ocean Removal approach that uses sunlight and seawater chemistry to extract CO2 from water.
In April 2024, the fund participated in Verne’s strategic raise to support cryo-compressed hydrogen storage for heavy-duty transport. In February 2025, the fund invested in Direct Air Capture (DAC) project developer Heirloom. United announced that the fund secured the right to purchase up to 500,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide removal (CDR), for either permanent storage or use as feedstock for SAF production. In May 2025, UAV’s fund invested in Twelve, an e-SAF project developer with a 14-year offtake agreement with IAG and building a small production facility in Washington State.
Other funds pursuing enabling stack focus
Though their capital deployments lists are not as furnished (or as transparent), other funds in the space appear to be following a similar enabling stack and diversified strategy.
SkiesFifty’s (formerly Clear Sky) first publicly-disclosed investment was in UK firm Firefly Green Fuels, which is developing a sewage-to-SAF pathway. Beyond SAF, SkiesFifty has also leaned into carbon management. In January 2025, it announced an investment in marine carbon removal firm Gigablue alongside an agreement for 200,000 tonnes of carbon credits over four years. In February 2025, it announced a partnership with Frontline BioEnergy structured as a JV to develop SAF projects. SkiesFifty also lists new propulsion OEM Maeve in their portfolio. See Ishka SAVi’s 2024 interview with co-founder Krishnan Narayanan
Meanwhile, the Qantas Climate Fund portfolio is made up of SAF projects, enabling infrastructure, and carbon supply. The Trans-Tasman-centred fund has invested in SAF project developer Jet Zero Australia to progress its ethanol-to-SAF project in Queensland, Project Ulysses. In recent days, on 10th February 2026, Airbus and Qantas through the fund invested in Australian low-carbon liquid fuels company HAMR Energy’s Series A. Qantas also invested (with bank ANZ and Japanese renewables company Renova) in a New Zealand SAF project being developed by Seadra Energy, aiming to convert regional agricultural waste into SAF and renewable diesel. It is also diversifying beyond SAF, with an investment into the Silva Carbon Origination Fund to secure Australian carbon Credits Units supply to meet compliance obligations.
Other approaches
Taking a slightly different approach are the Emirates Sustainability Fund, focused on R&D as exemplified by its first disbursement, which it allocated to the Aviation Impact Accelerator, based in Cambridge.
As for the Airbus-backed SAFFA, the fund is more focused on mature SAF projects and repurposing existing infrastructure. Accordingly the fund’s first investment was into Crysalis Biosciences, which has acquired a closed ethanol plant in Illinois to repurpose for alcohol-to-jet (AtJ) SAF production. Crysalis is also reportedly finalising a “master offtake agreement” with SAFFA’s investor base (airlines, aircraft manufacturers and aircraft owners in the fund), though no volumes or pricing have been disclosed.
Investor cast
The investor base is widening but unevenly, and in ways that can help explain the investment choices. The UAV Sustainable Flight Fund coalition model looks increasingly like a cross-value-chain platform rather than a single-airline or airline + partners vehicle. By February 2024, the fund exceeded $200 million and included airlines (e.g. Air Canada, Air New Zealand, Hawaiian), OEMs (Boeing, GE Aerospace, Honeywell, Embraer, Safran), finance and leasing (Aviation Capital Group, Aircastle, Natixis CIB), corporates (Google, travel company HIS), and others. This breadth may help explain its enabling stack approach.
Alliance-led, manager-run venture capital is emerging as a separate pathway, with Oneworld’s BEV fund the clearest example. Announced in September 2025, it is a $150 million initial close, managed by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and backed by Oneworld member airlines as investors (initially, American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, IAG, Cathay Pacific, Japan Airlines and Singapore Airlines). Its most notable attribute is the role given to airlines as aggregators of sector signals and strategic intent, while a specialist climate VC makes the investment selection.
Project-facing, asset-manager-led equity like SAFFA’s is different, giving investors SAF offtake optionality
The Ishka View
Despite increasing activity, the aggregate size of aviation sustainability funds remains modest compared with transition requirements. Industry and policy analyses estimate tens of billions of dollars will be required to meet SAF demand by 2030 and trillions by 2050 to replace fossil aviation fuels globally. At this time, funds ring-fenced for aviation transition appear to range between $50 million and $400 million in commitments.
However, these funds should not be viewed as the main capex providers for the global SAF buildout, as their role is earlier in the capital stack, in pushing projects that need a little bit more over the line, or in acting as industry anchor investors to attract larger and cheaper pools of capital.
Note: This report only captures disclosed aviation ring-fenced funds and does not include sustainability funds with a broader remit, such as KGAL’s ESPF6 or Brookfield’s Global Transition Fund.
