Press statement: STIP sets welcome plans but e-fuels need ambitious funding and targeted support

Brussels, 5 November 2025: Today the European Commission launched the Sustainable Transport Investment Plan (STIP), a roadmap for accelerating the energy transition for aviation and waterborne transport. A key pillar of the Clean Industrial Deal, the communication outlines plans for channelling investment to scale up alternative fuels, expected to mobilise at least €2.9 billion until the end of 2027.

While the STIP includes important mechanisms to drive investment, they are not targeted to the most sustainable aviation and maritime energy solutions, namely e-fuels produced with renewable hydrogen.

The Commission is making a clear stride in setting up a double-sided auction system with a market intermediary to close both the price gap between fossil and e-fuels and the time gap between producer and offtaker contract duration. A fair bit of money is being set aside for this, and a coalition of the willing of Member States is going ahead on a pilot project. However, following the pilot project, the Commission says it will look to set up an EU-wide mechanism that would not be exclusively for e-fuels, leaving the door wide open for biofuels to cannibalise the support e-fuels need most.

Despite the EU ETS being mentioned a few times in the document, calls to ensure revenues are recycled in the aviation and maritime sectors don’t go far enough: extending the EU ETS to international flights and ships between 400 and 5,000 gross tonnage will be key in generating sufficient revenues to seriously incentivise the decarbonisation of both sectors.

The Commission indicates that it will work on a book-and-claim system for tradeable alternative fuels certificates but fails to limit this to e-kerosene and does not clarify that only production within the EEA should be eligible. Both those points are essential in ensuring the right incentives are focused on the right fuels, and for the EU to build out its competitive advantage on tech innovations around the production of e-kerosene.

Aurelia Leeuw, Director of EU Policy at the SASHA Coalition, said:

The Commission should be commended for acting on the clear need for financing and de-risking of e-fuel production in the STIP. It needs to urgently ensure that this mechanism will stay exclusively focused on e-fuels only, and it should also show ambition on where the money should come from: extending the ETS. In light of the inaction we're seeing at a global level with disappointing outcomes at the IMO and ICAO, now is the right time for the EU to show some muscle and continue being the frontrunner that gets serious global action on the agenda by leading the way regionally.

Zero carbon technologies were largely absent from the STIP. Only zero carbon emission aircraft are mentioned, with the Commission indicating that hydrogen used by these will count towards e-kerosene targets. This is good news as such, but wildly insufficient for zero emission technologies at large.