Iata director general Willie Walsh hit out at prime minister Boris Johnson last week and called on governments to require fuel companies to produce sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) “at scale”.
Speaking at the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow, Johnson called a target of 10% of aviation fuel to be SAF by 2030 “pathetic”.
Walsh said: “I’m not sure Boris Johnson knew he was criticising himself because that is the UK government target. I’d like to think we would achieve more than that by 2030. [But] we need momentum. It’s not an issue of willingness on the part of airlines to use SAF. It’s an issue of willingness of fuel companies to supply it.”
The first commercial flight using SAF operated more than 13 years ago, but the amounts available to airlines remain tiny.
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Walsh said: “The tech is proven. We know this fuel works and it’s a drop-in fuel so we don’t require modifications. It doesn’t need any new infrastructure. What we need is greater supply.
“The industry has demonstrated its willingness to use it. We need to see fuel companies provide it at scale, and that will deal with the other critical issue which is price. The price of SAF is three times the price of kerosene, principally due to the low volume of manufacture.”
He added: “We need the policy framework. Governments need to do what they did with road transport where they provided incentives for fuel companies to produce alternative fuels.
“Mandating airlines to use a product that is not available is madness. We need fuel companies mandated to produce it. Once we get a global policy framework we can get motoring.”
Walsh argued: “We have to reduce the amount of additional CO2 we’re putting into the atmosphere and that is where SAFs come in. Trying to suppress aviation is not going to improve environmental performance.”
He defended the use of carbon offsets and the industry’s Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (Corsia), but acknowledged: “Offsetting has been undermined. It’s questionable whether some offsetting schemes being pursued five to 10 years ago were achieving anything. But Corsia is regulated. The credibility of these offsets has been tested, is being verified and audited.”
Corsia is in an initial voluntary phase and only becomes mandatory from 2027.
Walsh insisted: “We’ll have to continue to use offsets. [But] going forward we’ll have other forms of technology.”
He noted: “Airbus is upbeat about producing a hydrogen aircraft by 2035. Boeing is less positive. They think there are a lot of hurdles. The critical point is how we produce the hydrogen. There is no point claiming hydrogen is the solution if it’s not produced in a green way. There is a lot of work to be done on that.”
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