I have been looking into the aviation industry, recently (see here). Thinking about how sustainability works in this space has been part of that inquiry. Along these lines, I found the article in the url below, which suggests we are nowhere near developing a sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), and that any headline you might have seen suggesting the opposite is misleading, at best:
"IPS report says replacement fuels well off track to replace kerosene within timeframe needed to avert climate disaster."
Even worse:
"Hopes that replacement fuels for airplanes will slash carbon pollution are misguided and support for these alternatives could even worsen the climate crisis, a new report has warned."
Specifically:
"There is currently 'no realistic or scalable alternative' to standard kerosene-based jet fuels, and touted 'sustainable aviation fuels' are well off track to replace them in a timeframe needed to avert dangerous climate change, despite public subsidies, the report by the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive thinktank, found."
As with many good ideas in the sustainability space, the idea in theory is possible; in practice, scalability is the challenge:
"Chuck Collins, co-author of the report, said: 'To bring these fuels to the scale needed would require massive subsidies, the trade-offs would be unacceptable and would take resources aware from more urgent decarbonization priorities.'"
What are some of those potential tradeoffs?
"Burning sustainable aviation fuels still emits some carbon dioxide, while the land use changes needed to produce the fuels can also lead to increased pollution. Ethanol biofuel, made from corn, is used in these fuels, and meeting the Biden administration's production goal, the report found, would require 114m acres of corn in the US, about a 20% increase in current land area given over to the crop. In the UK, meanwhile, 50% of all agricultural land will have to be given up to sustain current flight passenger levels if jet fuel was entirely replaced."
The conclusion, due to the unique challenges of getting heavy airplanes off the ground:
"Phil Ansell, director of the Center for Sustainable Aviation at the University of Illinois, said the aviation industry had been faced with a much steeper challenge than other sectors to decarbonize. 'There's an under appreciation of how big the energy problem is for aviation. We are still many years away from zero pollution flights,' he said. … 'We are now trying to find solutions, but we are working at this problem and realizing it's a lot harder than we thought. We are late to the game. We are in the dark ages in terms of sustainability, compared to other sectors.'"
Take care
David
David Chandler
© Sage Publications, 2023
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'Magical thinking': hopes for sustainable jet fuel not realistic, report finds
By Oliver Milman
May 14, 2024
The Guardian
