“I think we are making a lot of promises we can’t keep,” Alex Wilcox, chief executive and co-founder of JSX, an independent airline in Dallas, said during a panel discussion on sustainability at a recent airline trade show in Long Beach.
Airlines say the effort — even if the goal can’t be reached — makes good business sense.
“There are people who want to fly with an airline that reflects their beliefs and values,” said United spokesperson Maddie King. “There are customers out there who are very interested in making their own lifestyle sustainable.”
Flight shame
Some may be driven by so-called flight shame, the guilt that environmentally-minded travellers have about the carbon footprint of their plane trips. It is a sentiment that is gaining popularity, thanks in part to the efforts of Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg.
Another motivation for the airlines is the fear that governments will begin to mandate emissions reductions through the use of fines or taxes. It has already begun in Europe, where the European Union has proposed an environmental plan that, among other changes, would revamp the bloc’s emissions trading program and introduce taxes on shipping and aviation fuels for the first time.
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A survey by a United Nations initiative of 1200 chief executives from around the world found that 72 per cent believe sustainability is an immediate priority.
The term “net zero” is somewhat misleading. IATA makes clear in its literature that using sustainable aviation fuel would achieve only about 65 per cent of the goal, with an additional 13 per cent coming from the use of new technology to make planes lighter, more fuel efficient and aerodynamic.
Over the last few years, many airlines have added “winglets” — vertical extensions of the wingtips on planes — to improve fuel efficiency by about 5 per cent.
Relying on offsets
Of the remaining emissions reductions, the lion’s share, about 19 per cent, would have to come from what are known as “offsets” or “carbon capture” technology.
In other words, the airlines would have to offset some aviation emissions by paying a third party to plant forests or preserve wetlands or by investing in the nascent technology that captures carbon by collecting it before it is released from such operations as coal-fired power plants, chemical plants or biomass power plants and storing it underground. United Airlines says it hopes to reach its goal without offsets.
Scientists and some environmentalists are cautious about how effective offsets are at achieving their aims.
To complete the transition, airlines will eventually need to abandon combustion engines and turn to alternative technology, such as hybrid or all-electric aircraft, according to experts. IATA envisions making the switch to such technology sometime in the 2030s.
Still, experts say batteries must become substantially lighter and more powerful before they can provide the propulsion for commercial planes. In the short term, an electric plane might be feasible for short flights, those of less than 320 kilometres, but developing batteries that can power a transcontinental or transatlantic flight could be decades away, they say.
“The path between where we are now and there requires substantial innovation,” said Gene Gebolys, chief executive of World Energy, a Boston biofuel energy company.
It takes about eight gallons of used cooking oil to make one gallon of sustainable aviation fuel, industry experts say.Credit:istock
For now, the biggest challenge is producing enough low-emission, sustainable jet fuel that can be used in existing commercial jets without modifications to power the world’s airlines.
The world’s refineries now produce about 26.4 million gallons of low-emission, sustainable aviation fuel a year, according to IATA. That is only a fraction of the 18.3 billion gallons of fuel burned by US carriers alone in 2019, according to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
A proposal in President Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan calls for a fuel tax credit that could boost production of sustainable aviation fuel to 3 billion gallons a year by 2030 — still a fraction of the fuel that airlines expect to need over the next decade.
“There is no question there is a challenge,” Gebolys said. “It’s all about scale.”
‘It’s feasible, but you need the incentives to be right.’
Jan Brueckner, professor at UC Irvine’s Institute of Transportation Studies
World Energy’s Paramount facility now has the capacity to refine cooking oil and rendered animal fat into 15 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuel a year. The fuel was used in United’s demonstration flight on December 1 and is used on JetBlue flights out of Los Angeles International Airport. The company is now investing $US1.5 billion to modernise the facility and enable it to produce up to 370 million gallons a year.
“Standing where we are right now, it is going to be an extremely ambitious goal to get to net zero by 2050,” Gebolys said. “Do I think it’s possible? Absolutely.”
Neste, a Finish company that calls itself the world’s largest producer of renewable diesel and jet fuel, generates 34 million gallons a year, with plans to reach 515 million gallons by mid-2023.
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“This is a nascent industry,” said Jeremy Baines, president of Neste US. “Petroleum producers have been at it for 100 years.”
For now, biofuel producers are relying on used cooking oil, rendered animal fat, the jatropha plant, algae and other so-called feedstock, but experts say refineries do not have access to enough of those materials to produce the billions of gallons of aviation fuel needed to reach the net-zero goal.
About 3 billion gallons of used cooking oil is collected annually from the nation’s hotels and restaurants, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency, but a lot of oil ends up in landfills or in sewers.
It takes about eight gallons of used cooking oil to make one gallon of sustainable aviation fuel, industry experts say. That means that even if every drop of cooking oil were collected and turned into jet fuel today, it still wouldn’t be enough to fuel all current flights.
“There is only so much used cooking oil in the world,” said Joshua S. Heyne, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Dayton.
To motivate private companies to increase the collection of used cooking oil, rendered animal fat and other feedstock, governments would probably have to provide tax breaks or grants to make it profitable, industry experts say.
“It’s feasible, but you need the incentives to be right,” Brueckner said.
The Los Angeles Times
