Blueprints for Bankability - RMI

This executive summary from RMI outlines five practical insights to improve the bankability of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) projects, focusing on risk-sharing, contract design, and cashflow stability to attract low-cost debt and accelerate the transition to low-carbon aviation.

• SAF projects face a significant challenge in securing low-cost debt despite the willingness of offtakers to commit, necessitating a focus on 'bankability' to enable large-scale deployment.
• To make SAF projects more investable, the document proposes five design principles: utilizing corporate clients for risk-sharing via book and claim systems; creating contracts with policy risk buffers and long-term, take-or-pay structures for lenders; implementing robust and transparent Energy Attribute Certificate (EAC) tracking; ensuring projects can reap benefits from higher carbon intensity reductions (tradability); and establishing contracted cashflow stability for both EACs and physical fuel.
• The document identifies existing platforms, specifically the Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB) and the SAFc registry, as starting points for standardizing the transfer of EACs to build market confidence.

APA

Chen, A., Dougherty, C., Ehirim, C., Mendelsohn, S., Shams, A., & Singh, H. (2025). Blueprints for Bankability - RMI. RMI. https://rmi.org/resources/blueprints-for-bankability-2/

Chicago

Chen, Andrew, Claire Dougherty, Chiudo Ehirim, Sarah Mendelsohn, Aamir Shams, and Hartej Singh. Blueprints for Bankability - RMI. RMI, 2025. https://rmi.org/resources/blueprints-for-bankability-2/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Chen |first1=Andrew |last2=Dougherty |first2=Claire |last3=Ehirim |first3=Chiudo |last4=Mendelsohn |first4=Sarah |last5=Shams |first5=Aamir |last6=Singh |first6=Hartej |title=Blueprints for Bankability - RMI |publisher=RMI |date=24 October 2025 |url=https://rmi.org/resources/blueprints-for-bankability-2/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{chen2025blueprints, author = {Chen, Andrew and Dougherty, Claire and Ehirim, Chiudo and Mendelsohn, Sarah and Shams, Aamir and Singh, Hartej}, title = {{Blueprints for Bankability - RMI}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2025}, month = oct, url = {https://rmi.org/resources/blueprints-for-bankability-2/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }