Airlines rant against EU over sustainable fuels
According to Lufthansa, Ryanair and other European airlines, the EU must do as the United States does and further stimulate the production of sustainable aviation fuels. All the details
Airlines for Europe, the organization that brings together the main European airlines – including Lufthansa, Ryanair, Air France-KLM, easyJet and International Airlines Group -, has asked the European Union to imitate the United States' plans for the increase of the production of sustainable aviation fuels.
WHAT ARE SUSTAINABLE AVIATION FUELS
Last year, European authorities approved a law that obliges airlines to introduce so-called sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) into their fuel mixes, in order to reduce emissions from aviation. SAF are fuels roughly equivalent to normal fossil fuels, obtained from organic sources or synthetically. Although they release CO2 when burned, SAFs have an overall lower carbon footprint than traditional kerosene-based jet fuel : this is because the CO2 they contain is "recycled", i.e. taken from the air or contained in organic waste used as raw material.
IN EUROPE PRODUCTION IS TOO LOW
European law requires airlines to include a 2 percent share of sustainable fuels in their mix from 2025; the percentage will rise to 6 percent in 2030 and then to 70 percent from 2050. However, Airlines for Europe complains that European production of SAF is too low and risks not being able to compare with that of the United States, supported by public incentives Inflation Reduction Act.
Joe Biden's administration has allocated grants and tax credits for SAF development totaling $3.3 billion.
“SAF production is highly incentivized in the United States,” said Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr. “We need those solutions here in Europe.” The CEO of International Airlines Group (which owns, among others, the British Airlines brand), Luis Gallego, added that “90 percent of SAF's investments in new plants are in the United States”. According to Gallego, European airlines risk not having enough SAF available to be able to comply with European directives: there is a lack of production plants and investment announcements are scarce.
THE PRICE PROBLEM
One of the main problems of SAF, however, which could limit its diffusion, is the much higher price than that of traditional jet fuel : they cost "two to six times more than fossil fuel", according to a brief from Cassa Depositi e Prestiti .
Sustainable fuels from organic sources, in particular, also have a scalability problem due to the reduced availability of raw materials compared to the needs of the sector. Currently, SAF is worth less than 0.1 percent of the total aviation fuels used in the world.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/compagnie-aeree-europee-carburanti-sostenibili-aviazione/ on Thu, 21 Mar 2024 12:54:43 +0000.