Watch: Sustainable fuel – a low-carbon solution for aviation
Sustainable aviation fuel holds great promise in helping the aviation industry reduce carbon emissions. Still, carbon pricing and other policy measures are needed to help spur investment and scale production to meaningful levels.
Sustainable fuel - a low-carbon solution for aviation
Key takeaways
Most sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) today is made from cooking oils and animal fats. Eventually, other feedstocks such as non-food crops, seaweed and algae, and wood by-products could play a role.
Ramping up SAF production to even 2% of total aviation fuel output would require an investment of $10 billion to build 20 new refineries, according to estimates by the International Energy Agency.
Though the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on aviation, it hasn’t changed the reality that the industry must figure out how to fly and emit less.
Sustainable aviation fuel holds great promise in helping the aviation industry reduce carbon emissions, but carbon pricing and other policy measures are likely needed to help spur the investment to scale production to meaningful levels, according to Shell’s top climate advisor.
“The biggest challenges are around scaling up the solutions that we've got,” said David Hone, Chief Climate Adviser for Shell.
Last year, production of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) was about 14 million gallons, just 0.1% of total aviation fuel. To ramp SAF to even 2% of total aviation fuel output would require investment of $10 billion to build 20 new refineries, according to estimates by the International Energy Agency.
“Once you reach the very large scale that aviation operates on it has to be a commercial proposition. And the only way it's going to work commercially is by doing more of it to drive the cost down, so economy of scale, but also potentially by introducing policy measures such as carbon pricing to draw in these fuels and make them compete against fossil fuels,” Hone said in a recent interview with Joel Makower, Editor-in-Chief of Greenbiz.com.
“The driving force isn't really quite there yet. We're just seeing that driving force awakened both in the public's eyes and the customer's eyes but also in the regulator's eyes. It's ultimately the regulators, I think, that will drive this to a sustainable conclusion because they will demand, because their voters requested of them, that the aviation sector be at net-zero emissions,” Hone said.
David Hone, Chief Climate Adviser for Shell“The driving force isn't really quite there yet. We're just seeing that driving force awakened both in the public's eyes and the customer's eyes but also in the regulator's eyes”
Ushering in a “low emissions age”
Most SAF today is made from cooking oils and animal fats. Eventually, other feedstocks such as non-food crops, seaweed and algae, and wood byproducts will play a role, Hone said.
“There are going to have to be new technologies. Today it's a relatively simple hydro-processing technology that's used to convert used oils, vegetable oils and things into aviation fuels. And that's a scalable option. But I think as we move forward and we look at very large volumes of aviation fuel, there'll probably be new technologies as well.”
SAF is a low-carbon solution for aviation because it is made from biomass, and when that biomass grows, it absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. When the fuel is burned, it returns the same carbon to the atmosphere, where it is then absorbed by new biomass. That creates a closed-loop, net-zero-emissions effect on the atmosphere.
As flight resumes, Hone said the industry may be on the cusp of the “Low Emissions Age”, a time that will fundamentally transform the aviation industry in the same way the Jet Age did.
“It's important to look at the history of the aviation business to try and think about this. This is a business that's grown over the 20th century from nothing to really very significant scale. And it's a business that in the process has fostered change,” Hone said. “We've got to imagine that happening in this transition as well. Now, there's a little bit of a chicken-and-egg thing here, but so who's going to step out and make the big order for new fuels? Or who's going to step out and build facilities that manufacture new fuels and offer them into the market?”
David Hone, Shell
David Hone joined Shell in 1980 after graduating as a Chemical Engineer from the University of Adelaide in South Australia, initially working as a refinery engineer before becoming the supply economist at the Shell refinery in Sydney. In 1989, he transferred to London to work for Shell Trading and held a number of senior positions in that organisation until taking up his current role as Chief Climate Change Adviser in 2001. David is also Board Member and former Chair of the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), a global business organisation of some 130 companies.
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