Airlines’ unrealistic hope that sustainable fuels will propel them to…
Airlines are desperate to believe, and get everyone else to believe, that flying can be made “low carbon”, so everyone can continue to fly, with a clear conscience about their impact on irrevocably altering Earth’s climate. But the only real option,(while the sector is trying to grow as much as possible) that might make a significant reduction in aviation carbon emissions, is using other novel fuels. So-called SAF (Sustainable Aviation Fuel). Currently if aviation used every drop of available SAF, it would be about 0.1% of total aviation demand. There are grandiose plans to aviation to use 10%, 20%, 30% or whatever within the next 2 or 3 decades. ie. unrealistic growth. But as Cait Hewitt, of the AEF said: “…there is increasing scepticism about the possibility of scaling up SAFs … There’s no feedstock – everything is in demand elsewhere. They work really much more like an offset. …The idea of using waste from processes such as intensive agriculture or animal fats, or plastic manufacture, that are fundamentally unsustainable … I don’t think you can claim that as a sustainable carbon reduction.” ,Tweet Airlines hope that sustainable fuels will propel them to a guilt-free future Could a normal jet engine really be net zero? Aviation executives certainly seem to hope it can, but others have doubts Gwyn Topham Transport correspondent @GwynTopham (Guardian) Sat 10 Jun 2023 Sustainable aviation fuels may or may not eventually transform the carbon footprint of flying. But while a full tank is a way off, the mere whiff of a guilt-free future has got airline executives giddy. The annual meeting of Iata, the airlines’ global trade body, in Istanbul last week served up some exotic fare. Was that Willie Walsh, its director general, denouncing governments for “greenwashing”? And Marjan Rintel, boss of KLM and fresh from a Dutch court battle against government caps on Schiphol flights, outlining her purpose to “create memorable experiences on the planet we care for”? And Mehmet Tevfik Nane, head of Turkish airline Pegasus, co-hosting an event for 1,500 delegates where he urged firms and states to join their climate struggle, saying “we have to take care and heal our world”? Wider society’s mix of dissociation, hope and underlying fear about climate is writ large in aviation, whose leaders are well aware of its outsized share of greenhouse gas emissions and lack of easy options to decarbonise. Meanwhile, passenger numbers are booming, with rampant demand for travel after Covid. Airlines are gearing up for worldwide growth, as China reopens and Indian carriers expand. Bar the obvious solution of flying less, immediate tangible steps to cut CO2 are limited. Commercial flights using hydrogen or electric power are, at best, a hope for the future. Replacing old fleets with modern fuel-efficient planes for less CO2 a head is a step most airlines are taking – but that benefits the bottom line more than the environment when more people fly. So, the magic elixir is SAF – sustainable aviation fuel – which Walsh affirmed would “be the biggest contributor to net zero success”. However, in broad terms right now, it “basically doesn’t exist”, as Iata’s chief economist, Marie Owens Thomsen, put it. Airlines might be using “every single drop” of SAF available, but that amounts to 0.1% of the total jet fuel needed – and supplies are impossible to find in much of the world. Airlines are looking at an interim target of 30bn litres a year – 100 times the current supply – by 2030. The reasons for hope are a plethora of projects springing up, especially in the US; rapidly developing technology; and some govern
