Too expensive, too scarce: Doubt sets in on green aviation fuel
As the aviation industry looks to achieve carbon-neutral status by 2050, sustainable aviation fuel has emerged as the magic potion to propel airlines and manufacturers into that era. But initial enthusiasm about the fuel has given way to a more realistic, if not downright pessimistic, view on the industry’s ambitious target. SAF is still scarce and therefore expensive. Generating the required quantities of alternative fuel would require huge areas of land and natural resources. And footing the bill for the switch would most likely fall to the flying public as the airline industry points to its razor-thin profit margins. Executives meeting in Lisbon for the World Aviation Festival last week struck a downbeat tone on the 2050 goals. While they weren’t outright abandoned, leaders including Emirates President Tim Clark called for more realism. And the topic will be the central theme again on Tuesday when the International Air Transport Association holds its World Sustainability Symposium in Madrid. “Don’t fool yourselves on all this,” Clark said of the industry’s targets. “Because if you hold out that things can be achieved by such and such a time, it causes huge dysfunctionality.” IAG CEO Luis Gallego and Ryanair DAC’s CEO Eddie Wilson have also warned that the path to an emissions-free industry will be long and expensive. “The reality is that we have ambitious objectives, but we don’t have the way to comply with these,” Gallego said in Lisbon, where his on-stage appearance was briefly interrupted by a duo of protesting climate activists. Gallego also said that eSAF, a synthetic fuel derived from renewable energy including solar, hydro and wind power, may be more scalable than currently available alternative fuels, which rely on non-petroleum feedstocks like cooking oil, waste, sugar and cereal. The problem with eSAF, though, is that it’s energy-intensive to produce. So much so, according to Deutsche Lufthansa AG CEO Carsten Spohr, that it would consume half of Germany’s entire electricity production to produce enough for its fleet. <br/>
https://portal.staralliance.com/cms/news/hot-topics/2023-10-03/general/too-expensive-too-scarce-doubt-sets-in-on-green-aviation-fuel
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Too expensive, too scarce: Doubt sets in on green aviation fuel
As the aviation industry looks to achieve carbon-neutral status by 2050, sustainable aviation fuel has emerged as the magic potion to propel airlines and manufacturers into that era. But initial enthusiasm about the fuel has given way to a more realistic, if not downright pessimistic, view on the industry’s ambitious target. SAF is still scarce and therefore expensive. Generating the required quantities of alternative fuel would require huge areas of land and natural resources. And footing the bill for the switch would most likely fall to the flying public as the airline industry points to its razor-thin profit margins. Executives meeting in Lisbon for the World Aviation Festival last week struck a downbeat tone on the 2050 goals. While they weren’t outright abandoned, leaders including Emirates President Tim Clark called for more realism. And the topic will be the central theme again on Tuesday when the International Air Transport Association holds its World Sustainability Symposium in Madrid. “Don’t fool yourselves on all this,” Clark said of the industry’s targets. “Because if you hold out that things can be achieved by such and such a time, it causes huge dysfunctionality.” IAG CEO Luis Gallego and Ryanair DAC’s CEO Eddie Wilson have also warned that the path to an emissions-free industry will be long and expensive. “The reality is that we have ambitious objectives, but we don’t have the way to comply with these,” Gallego said in Lisbon, where his on-stage appearance was briefly interrupted by a duo of protesting climate activists. Gallego also said that eSAF, a synthetic fuel derived from renewable energy including solar, hydro and wind power, may be more scalable than currently available alternative fuels, which rely on non-petroleum feedstocks like cooking oil, waste, sugar and cereal. The problem with eSAF, though, is that it’s energy-intensive to produce. So much so, according to Deutsche Lufthansa AG CEO Carsten Spohr, that it would consume half of Germany’s entire electricity production to produce enough for its fleet. <br/>
