Biden eyes 2050 target for all air fuel to be from renewable sources

Sustainable aviation fuel, made with cooking oil and animal fat, is up to five times more expensive than regular jet fuel

The Biden administration is in early talks to eliminate the airline industry’s fossil fuel usage by 2050, according to a new report.

Two sources told Reuters that the goal would be to replace fossil fuels with sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in a bid to reduce the sector’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The talks come as President Joe Biden and his administration ramp up efforts to combat the climate crisis – following a stark new report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicating increasingly dire environmental scenarios in the coming decades.

SAF, made from materials such as cooking oil and animal fat, is up to five times more expensive than regular jet fuel. Fuel is the second-largest expense for airlines after labour costs.

“As part of the Build Back Better agenda, President Biden proposed catalytic investments to propel innovation and deployment of ‘sustainable aviation fuels,’” Ali Zaidi, deputy national climate advisor for the White House, told Reuters – without confirming a 2050 target date.

“The administration is committed to advancing climate solutions in every sector and segment of the economy – with the urgency that the climate crisis demands.”

While a 2050 SAF target was not confirmed, the administration has listed the same year as its goal date for net-zero emissions.

Global demand for jet fuel currently totals roughly 200 billion litres a year, but airline trade group IATA estimates just 100 million to 120 million litres of SAF will be produced in 2021 – just 0.05 per cent of overall fuel, Reuters reported.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, aircraft comprise 12 per cent of US transportation emissions and three per cent of the country’s total greenhouse gas production.

“Globally, aviation produced 2.4 percent of total CO2 emissions in 2018,” the D.C.-based Environmental and Energy Study Institute reports on its website.

“While this may seem like a relatively small amount, consider that if global commercial aviation were a country in the national CO2 emissions standings, the industry would rank number six in the world between Japan and Germany. Non-CO2 effects, such as warming induced by aircraft contrails and other pollutants, bring the combined total contribution of commercial aviation to approximately 5 percent of the world’s climate-warming problem.”

The replacement of fossil fuels by airlines with SAF is a major concern across the globe, with Europe being more proactive than America in implementing plans to urge its adoption. There, regulators are seeking to force suppliers to blend rising amounts of SAF into their kerosene.

US airlines oppose that mandate but environmentalists argue a similar rule will be needed to raise production and bring down the price of alternative fuel.

“Refiners make more renewable diesel right now because federal and state governments offer more incentives, such as California’s credit of 45 cents per gallon,” Reuters reported. “Congress is debating a tax credit of up to $2 per gallon for SAF.”

If such a credited were available, World Energy, the largest US SAF producer, would be able to sell its SAF for roughly the same as conventional fuel, Bryan Sherbacow, the company’s chief commercial officer, told Reuters.

“World Energy’s Los Angeles-area plant uses around a third of its 25 million-gallon annual capacity for making aviation fuel, with the rest producing other renewable fuel,” Reuters reported.

“The company is betting on SAF becoming more affordable, as it is boosting the plant’s SAF capacity to around 150 million gallons by 2023.”

Sherbacow told Reuters that, if incentives were balanced, “we would probably be making a lot more jet fuel.”