Iata issues a monthly report on the aviation industry’s efforts and progress toward attaining the Carbon Nett-Zero goal by 2050. Travel News highlights some of the initiatives.
*Iata’s latest policy paper on SAF calls for stronger incentives to increase SAF deployment across the industry. The association says government policy has an instrumental role to play in the deployment of SAF and Iata encourages policies which are harmonised across countries and industries, while being technology- and feedstock-agnostic. Incentives should be used to accelerate SAF deployment. As SAF is in the early stages of market development, mandates should only be used if they are part of a broader strategy to increase the production of SAF and complemented with incentive programs that facilitate innovation, scale-up and unit cost reduction.
*In the EU, under the European Green Deal a new law was agreed to cut aviation emissions by promoting SAF. The agreement marks an important and timely step necessary to the realisation of the ambitious targets of the decarbonisation roadmap to which the sector has committed. Some of the key elements of the agreement include:
- Setting of mandates for minimum SAF uplift at EU airports of 2% by 2025, 6% by 2030 and 20% by 2035, up to a maximum of 70% by 2050. Of these amounts, 1,2% in 2030, and 5% in 2035 must be power-to- liquid (PtL) or E-Fuels, increasing to 35% by 2050.
- A requirement for the Commission to report by 2024 on the feasibility of a Book and Claim (B&C) system for airlines to manage the supply of SAF in a flexible way across the EU.
- A call for states to adhere to a single EU SAF mandate and avoid a patchwork of national SAF mandates.
*Ryanair has announced a partnership with Neste Holland to power approximatively a third of its flights at Schiphol with a 40% SAF blend.
*Sweden’s Northvolt subsidiary Cuberg unveiled a new program dedicated to developing high-performance battery systems that will enable safe, sustainable electric flight.
*United Airlines has announced a $15 million investment in Svante, a Canadian company specialising in carbon capture and removal technology. (Svante provides materials and technology as part of the value chain that has the potential to convert CO2 removed from the atmosphere and from industrial emission sources into SAF).
*Air India has signed an agreement with KSU Aviation to launch TaxiBot operations at Delhi and Bengaluru airports for its Airbus A320 Family of aircraft. Taxibots are semi-autonomous vehicles that enable aircraft taxiing without engines running, controlled by the pilot of the aircraft. The adoption of TaxiBots should save 15 000 tonnes in fuel consumption over three years.
*A SAF production facility with an annual output capacity of 1 million tonnes will be built in Maoming, Guangdong Province in China.
