Is the world’s big idea for greener air travel a flight of fancy?

Credit: infra.global

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This article says the sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) industry is ‘struggling with a shortage of supplies and suspected fraud’, and questions whether it’s merely a ‘token effort’ on aviation emissions. It could even be that, like the idea of more fast roads generating more journeys and more traffic, increasing SAF supply merely helps to boost the total volume of flights, so defeating the strange concept of reducing ’emissions’ of the vitally important to nature trace gas CO2, under the banner of ‘net zero’.
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This is the starting point for Europe’s lofty dreams of greener air travel – a collection point in Malaysia for greasy plastic bottles filled with discarded frying oil, thousands of miles from its final destination, says Climate Home News.

One Saturday morning last month in the city of Melaka, volunteers in green T-shirts rushed over as Adibah Rahim and her husband drove into the central square, eager to unpack, weigh and register her consignment of used cooking oil (UCO) – the “liquid gold” in European plans to ramp up production of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).

Rahim left the collection point 90 ringgit ($21) richer, three ringgit per litre of oil – a welcome boost to her family’s household budget.
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When made from waste such as UCO, rather than agricultural commodities like soy or palm oil, backers say SAF can slash planet-heating emissions [Talkshop comment – unsupported assertion] by up to 80% over kerosene jet fuel, without taking up land that would otherwise be used for food crops, or fuelling forest destruction.

But behind SAF’s climate-friendly facade, a months-long investigation by Climate Home News and its partner The Straits Times has uncovered an opaque global supply chain that exposes jet fuel providers and their aviation clients to significant fraud risks, raising doubts about the climate benefits of the sector’s main green hope for the years ahead.

As SAF producers scramble for limited raw materials to meet new blending quotas in Europe and growing demand elsewhere, barely used and virgin palm oil is being passed off as UCO to traders that supply fuel companies, experts and industry operators told us.

Palm oil that is not considered waste is not permitted under European Union rules for SAF because of its links to deforestation.

Our reporting focused on the UCO trade between Malaysia, the world’s second-biggest palm oil producer, and Spain, the EU’s largest aviation market and home to one of its SAF pioneers – oil-and-gas giant Repsol.
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Shrinking air travel’s carbon footprint
Europe’s green aviation fuel refineries are boosting output because of new requirements by the EU and the UK for planes to use more SAF in the coming decades. From the start of this year, fuel supplied to airports across Europe needs to contain at least 2% of SAF, with targets rising gradually over the next 15 years, putting huge strain on tight global supplies.

SAF is crucial for shrinking aviation’s carbon footprint, according to industry body the International Air Transport Association (IATA), and is expected to account for 65% of emissions reductions by 2050, when the sector has committed to reaching net zero.

In 2023, emissions from international plane travel accounted for 2.5% of the world’s energy-related carbon emissions. As air travel increases, and other sectors are more easily able to decarbonise, that share is set to grow.

Full article here.
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Image credit: infra.global