Flying Green?

In recent years, high hopes have been expressed in so-called ‘Sustainable Aviation Fuels’ (SAF) as a new technology to make aviation more environmentally friendly. This study examines public negotiations of SAF in Denmark, centering on how news media frame SAF, and how different actor groups are represented. We examine the negotiations of SAF from 2018–2023, when SAF entered the mediated public sphere as a new(s) topic. The analysis differentiates between three public arenas: national mainstream media, regional/local media, and trade journals devoted to energy and mobility. Drawing on a systematic sample and combining quantitative framing analysis with qualitative in-depth readings, the study finds that political-regulative, technology, and optimistic climate frames are the most prevalent, across different public arenas. We identify a dominant discourse of climate tech governance, not least driven by the use of elite sources from business, politics, and science. These sources contribute to projecting SAF events into the future, magnifying SAF as potentially groundbreaking.