While Airbus appears determined not to take its eye off the long-term prize of bringing a hydrogen-powered airliner to market by 2035, the European airframer hasn’t lost sight of the reality that airlines’ use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) will serve as a key pathway to reducing air transport’s contribution to climate change over the next decade. In fact, a recent agreement the company entered with Finnish oil refining group Neste to collaborate on accelerating the aviation sector’s transition to SAF represents just one component of what Airbus promotes as an immediate need to decarbonize.
Panelists appearing in Toulouse during Airbus’s recent Sustainability Summit agreed that the biggest challenge as it relates to SAF centers on availability and the sheer volumes the industry will need to meet its carbon reduction targets. Neste vice president for sustainable aviation Thorsten Lange addressed the question of how to get enough SAF to the right places at the right time. “Depending on who you ask, the world global consumption of conventional fuels is between 300 and 360 million tonnes a year,” he noted. “Neste, being the world's largest producer of sustainable aviation fuel, has been producing and delivering this year 100,000 tonnes. That shows you a bit the calamities we are in here and the challenges we have.”
Neste plans to increase production “massively” next year with the first SAF output from its new Singapore refinery, which, said Lange, will contribute 1 million tonnes of the fuel annually. With planned production increases at other refineries, Neste expects its output to reach about 2.2 million tonnes. While significant in relation to today’s industrywide SAF production, that amount accounts for just a small fraction of the production needed to achieve an ambition set at the World Economic Forum of accelerating the supply and use of SAF to reach 10 percent of the global jet aviation fuel supply by 2030.
“If you turn it the other way around, we need another 20 Nestes to meet the targets,” explained Lange. “Will we manage? I'm optimistic we will. The aviation industry was always on the forefront also when it comes to sustainability.”
Public Perception a Key Consideration
Still, Lange conceded the pressure the industry faces in terms of public perception. “Realistically, our greenhouse gas contribution is around two to three percent of let's say the climate impact,” he said. “But if you ask normal passengers or people they think it's 20, 30 percent, or whatever. This is not the case, but we are acting like it is, which is good…”
Calling the aviation business a leader in the effort to decarbonize, Lange nevertheless stressed the need for help and support from industry and regulators to educate populations about its importance.
“If you talk to people nowadays, most of them don’t have a clue about what SAF is,” he explained. “Most of them are thinking it’s not possible, so we have to demystify that.”
Meanwhile, policymakers must do more, he added. “Regulations are key,” he stressed. “We need higher, more ambitious mandates. The plan for Europe is to have a 2 percent mandate for 2025. It’s good, but from my perspective, it’s not ambitious enough. We can do more.”
The wider European Union mandate for increased SAF usage will require fuel suppliers to meet a requirement that SAF accounts for 5 percent of all fuel pumped at member state airports by 2030, rising to 32 percent in 2040 and 63 percent in 2050. Last week, UK aviation minister Baroness Vere confirmed at a Royal Aeronautical Society conference in London that her government will implement a 10 percent SAF “target” by 2030.
For its part, Neste spends more than $1 billion every year on increasing production capacity, said Lange, but added that competitors must do more to join the effort. “I invite competitors to cooperate because this is a joint effort, a joint journey, and we’re happy to be on board with all stakeholders,” he said.
Airbus Urges Adoption of Science-based Targets
Also appearing in Toulouse, Airbus head of sustainability Nicolas Chretien stressed the importance of setting “meaningful” science-based climate targets. As part of its validation process with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), Airbus has set targets for emissions produced by their own processes (Scope 1), energy and power they buy in (Scope 2), and those generated by suppliers and end-users (scope 3), reported Chretien. However, he reiterates that Airbus and the rest of the industry won’t meet their net-zero commitments without the ability to produce more SAF.
“If you look at the carbon footprint of our products, 98 percent is related to the use phase, the famous Scope 3 use of sole products,” he said. “It’s essentially linked to the type of fuel and the energy carrier that we’re using and their relative dependency we have on fossil energy because we already have the potential to fly airplanes on sustainable aviation fuel. So, in a sense, we can’t disconnect and we can't achieve our climate targets and the net-zero commitment of aviation if we're not capable of enabling SAF ramp-up at scale. So that's what we're looking at.”
Chretien further noted that Airbus has reduced the energy intensity of its products by more than 50 percent over the past 30 years. “But that’s not enough,” he added. “We need to shift the ecosystem to a fully decarbonized one.”
Calling the industry’s biggest collective challenge to prime and accelerate the supply of SAF, Chretien said Airbus’s contribution starts with what he called “priming the demand pump,” or acting as a catalyst for fostering production through partnerships, committing to capital expenditure, and aid the maturation of some “key technology bricks.” For example, the company wants to ensure the aircraft it delivers today can fly on 100 percent SAF because those airplanes will stay in operation until 2045 or 2050.
“That’s actually what we’re doing by bringing the right capacity, I would say, in some specific regions of the world like the example of our partnership with Qantas to really build up the SAF supply and infrastructure in Australia,” he noted.
Separately, Airbus has realigned its Scope 1 and 2 targets to meet the industry’s objective of holding the warming of the planet to 1.5 degrees above preindustrial levels. Toward that end, Airbus has set a target of a 63 percent reduction in emissions by 2030 under those criteria. Chretien noted that 60 percent of its Scope 1 and 2 emissions come from stationary operations such as running buildings and machines while 40 percent involves mobile operations such as flight testing and shipping airplane components on the Beluga transport.
“We are already operating our Beluga with 5 percent SAF,” he explained. “So we can compare 5 percent to less than 1 percent at a global level. Obviously, we’re not running an operation the size of Air France, but that is a good step forward. And next year we are already looking to ramp up to 10 percent SAF on Beluga and flight test operations. And we’re looking at fully exploring the capability of the aircraft to be able to operate those aircraft with up to 50 percent SAF by 2030.”
Addressing Air France’s sustainability efforts, company director of sustainable development and new mobility Vincent Etchebehere stressed the importance of accelerating the degrowth of carbon emissions even while passenger traffic increases. In Air France’s case, between 2005 and 2019, the French flag carrier saw its traffic increase by 32 percent while reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 6 percent, even while not considering carbon offsetting. “So mathematically, it is possible,” he said. “Then the question is it possible for the whole industry? I don’t think it’s a question of is it possible or not. Let’s do it.”