Airlines will not be able to avoid higher costs if they use novel (lower carbon) fuels
The CEO of Delta, which is probably the world second biggest airline, has said that tackling climate change will make flying more expensive. [And so it should]. Ed Bastian claims that after spending $30m (£22.4m) a year on carbon-offsetting the airline has been “carbon neutral” since March 2020. It has also pledged to spend $1bn over the next decade to cancel out all the emissions it creates. It gives no details of how it is doing this, and it is well known that most carbon offsets do not work, and the carbon is NOT “cancelled out.” The most effective way to cut the greenhouse gases produced by aviation is to have fewer flights and fewer passengers. But the airlines all intend to grow, perhaps by 3% per year if they can. Their only hope of reducing their emissions a little, while they expand, is novel aviation fuels (referred to as sustainable aviation fuel) – SAF. These will be difficult to produce, and probably impossible to produce in the amounts the aviation industry want. The cost of these fuels is high, which will mean more expensive flying. Delta wants to use 10% sustainable aviation fuel by the end of 2030. Ryanair wants 12.5% SAF by 2030; IAG wants 10% by 2030. The EU says SAF currently accounts for just 0.05% of jet fuel use in the EU.
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Delta boss says climate change means flying will cost more
By Jonathan Josephs, Business reporter, BBC News
16.11.2021
The boss of the world’s second biggest airline has said that tackling climate change will make flying more expensive.
“Over time, it’s going to cost us all more, but it’s the right approach that we must take,” Delta Air Lines chief executive Ed Bastian told the BBC.
Aviation is responsible for about 2.5% of the carbon emissions that are warming the planet, according to the International Energy Agency. [And perhaps double that figure, for the warming effect of burning jet fuel at altitude. AW comment]
Critics argue the best way to reduce them is by flying less.
Atlanta-based Delta says that after spending $30m (£22.4m) a year on carbon-offsetting it has been carbon neutral since March 2020. It has also pledged to spend $1bn over the next decade to cancel out all the emissions it creates. [How exactly??]
More fuel-efficient planes, sustainable aviation fuels and removing carbon from the atmosphere are some of the ways it hopes to achieve this.
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Andreas Schafer, professor of energy and transport at University College London, says it will “cost trillions rather than billions of dollars” to move the global aviation sector to net zero carbon emissions.
Preliminary results from his team’s research suggest airfares would need to increase by 10%-20% to cover the costs.
“In the short-term, government support will be needed with those costs as decarbonising aviation will be extremely challenging, and current efforts will need to be scaled up dramatically”, says Prof Schafer. [It is not at all obvious why taxpayers’ money should be used to pay for the aviation industry’s problems, when most of the flights are taken by a minority. AW comment]
Moving aviation to net zero carbon emissions is the right approach, says Ed Bastian
Mr Bastian concedes it is an ambitious goal that his airline won’t be able to achieve alone.
“It’s the biggest long-term challenge this industry faces,” he said. “We’re in an industry that’s classified as hard to decarbonise because we don’t have the bio-fuels or the sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) en masse yet that we’re going to need.” [Sustainable is a terribly over-worked, abused word that has become almost meaningless. A better term might be alternative fuels. AW comment ]
Delta aims to be using 10% sustainable aviation fuel by the end of 2030.
Many airlines and fuel companies are investing in SAFs. Other technologies being developed involve turning food waste into jet fuel and using carbon dioxide pulled out of the air. However, these still cost more than traditional jet fuels and the quantities needed are also seen as problematic.
According to the US government, global demand for jet fuel is set to more than double by 2050 .
The number of passenger flights is set to jump from a pre-pandemic 4.5 billion to 10 billion by 2050, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
IATA director general Willie Walsh told the BBC that while creating the levels of SAF production needed was a big challenge, “it is perfectly possible if industry and governments work together”. [The airline industry wants public money, in order to keep flying, and keep emitting carbon and heating the atmosphere. Even if a fuel is “zero carbon” it still creates a heating effect on the atmosphere, due in part to the unavoidable water vapour that forms contrails. AW comment]
“Production increases will bring the cost down to competitive levels. We’ve seen similar increases in the development of solar and wind power in recent decades.” [ It is not at all clear that there is the potential to produce large amounts of fuels that are genuinely low carbon, without using crops or crop wastes, that have negative environmental impacts. The electro-fuels would need vast amounts of renewably generated electricity, which will not be available, once all domestic heating has to be through low carbon electricity; all road vehicles powered by electricity; all public buildings; all trains; all factories and so on. AW comment]
At the UN climate change summit in Glasgow, 23 countries have pledged to work together to get the aviation industry to net zero carbon emissions by 2050. More efficient energy use, sustainable aviation fuels and electric aeroplanes are all part of their ambitions.
However, environmental campaign group Greenpeace says the agreement is “brazen greenwashing”.
“This announcement is full of scams like offsetting, and excessive optimism on so-called ‘sustainable aviation fuels’ and future aircraft designs,” says Greenpeace’s Klara Maria Schenk.
“But it lacks the one thing that’s needed to deliver the goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5C which is tangible action to prioritise green travel and reduce flights.”
Mr Bastian thinks the number of flights will return to pre-pandemic levels.
“All forms of travel are on the way back. Families are the part of the travelling public that we’re most happy to see, because there’s been some really difficult stories over time of families not being able to connect for long [periods]”. Business travel is also returning because video meetings can’t replace everything, says Mr Bastian.
That desire to travel helped Delta to report a $194m profit in the three months to the end of September, its first profit since the pandemic began.
… and it continues (“blah, blah, blah”).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59261408
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See earlier:
Unconvincing airline hype about large future use of so called “sustainable aviation fuels”
Airlines are falling over each other, to say how much “Sustainable Aviation Fuel” (SAF) they plan to use in future, and how this will greatly increase their carbon emissions. Ryanair says it will use 12.5% SAF by 2030; IAG says it will use 10% by 2030; easyJet says they will use SAF in the short term, but “we must avoid all resources being drawn into SAFs, which don’t fully solve the problem.” According to the European Commission, SAF currently accounts for just 0.05% of jet fuel use in the EU, and without further regulation, the share is expected to reach just 2.8% by 2050. There is disagreement between low cost, short haul airlines and those flying longer routes, about whether SAF fuel quotas should apply to all flights, not only short haul. Long-haul air services departing European airports accounted for 48% of CO2 emissions from all operations in 2019, while making up just 6% of flights, according to Eurocontrol data. It is unclear what all this SAF is going to be made from. One of the very few fuels thought to genuinely be low carbon, up to now, has been used cooking oil. But it has been revealed that there is considerable fraud, with virgin palm oil (causing deforestation) being passed off as used.
Chris Stark (CCC) on how aviation needs to cut its emissions, only using CCS – which it must pay for – as a last resort
The Head of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), Chris Stark, has given evidence to the Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) on the aspirations of the aviation sector to get to “net zero” by 2050, and the government’s “jet zero” plan. He said aviation, unlike other transport sectors, was unlikely to meet targets for net zero by 2050. The sector should pay for costly engineered carbon removal technologies (CCS) rather than rely on using the planting of trees to claim they are reducing CO2 emissions. And these offsets and removal technologies should only be used as a last resort, after direct cuts of carbon and emissions by the industry itself. He said carbon removal technologies are not a “free pass” for the industry. Removals are expensive, and the sector should pay for them themselves – which would put up ticket prices. It was regrettable that the DfT’s transport decarbonisation plan had not mentioned the necessity of reducing air travel demand. There is a danger that the tech does not deliver. The plans need to be assessed every 5 years, and though that is a difficult choice for government, demand management may have to be considered in future.
Click here to view full story…
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If a jet fuel is produced, and it genuinely (questionable, but stay with it …) is produced so that it provides a 50% carbon saving. That means that making the fuel either prevented that carbon going into the atmosphere, or if avoided methane from the breakdown of waste from entering the atmosphere, or it was made using CO2 captured from some industrial process or a power station.
It considered to be 50% lower carbon than conventional jet fuel. And it is directly equivalent as jet fuel, in terms of its performance.
Then it is burned in the plane’s engines. Both fuels produce almost exactly the same amount of CO2. Both fuels probably produce (there might be slight differences) the same amount of non-CO2 impacts, such as formation of contrails. The non-CO2 warming impact is at least twice that of burning the fuel alone.
If one unit (x) of conventional jet fuel, when burned in a jet engine, produces two units of climate warming (y).
If one unit of 50% lower carbon fuel is burned in a jet engine, it produces 1.5 units of heating (ie. 2 – 0.5). = a 25% reduction.
If that 50% lower carbon fuel had been burned in a road vehicle engine, it would not have that double climate impact. There could be said to be a genuine 50% carbon saving. But used as jet fuel, that saving is largely wiped out – in terms of warming effect.
Even if a fuel was 75% lower carbon than conventional jet fuel, one unit burned in a jet engine would produce 1.25 units of heating. (ie. 2 – 0.75) = a 37.5% reduction.