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Can Oil Industry Giants Like Shell Provide Sustainable Jet Fuel By 2025?

Airlines and aviation are recovering from their COVID-19 tailspin, which parked 17,000 airliners in 2020. Meanwhile, aviation accounts for 3% of worldwide carbon emissions, but cutting back is difficult due to a lack of alternatives to energy-dense jet fuel. Yet despite today’s woes, aviation industry fuel suppliers like Shell and BP are working towards creating “greener” energy sources.

As far back as 2010, a US Air Force A-10 Warthog attack aircraft flew a test flight from Eglin Air Force base in Florida fueled by canola oil.

Increasing production of cleaner sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is key, as it may be 2040 before alternative power sources such as hydrogen or battery-electric engines are ready. Shell says its goal is to produce two million tonnes of SAF by 2025.

This is a drop in the proverbial bucket compared to the worldwide jet fuel demand of 330 million tonnes in 2019. But two million tonnes are a vast improvement on the 100 million liters of SAF produced this year, or just 100,000 tonnes. Investment bank Jefferies says SAF accounts for less than 0.1% of today’s global aviation fuel needs.

What is sustainable aviation fuel? SAF are fuels made from sustainable feedstocks and other organic materials. These can include cooking oil and other non-palm waste oils from animals or plants, food scraps, solid waste such as packaging, paper, textiles, and forestry waste wood. Other promising sources are energy crops, including fast growing plants and algae, as well as ‘synthetic SAF’ made from waste gases.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) says SAF has the potential to reduce lifecycle emissions by up to 80%, compared with conventional aviation fuel. Shell points out that SAF is “also a drop-in fuel, which can be blended in a ratio of up to 50% with conventional jet fuel for use in aircraft operating today.”

The concept of SAF is similar to ethanol, also not a new idea. Biomass fuel goes back at least to the 1850’s. Much of the US and world gasoline supply contains ethanol, often made from corn in the US and sugar cane and beets elsewhere.

But a critical difference between ethanol and SAF for airlines is that “jet fuel packs a lot of energy for its weight. It is this energy density that has really enabled commercial flight,” as BP puts it. Shell notes that conventional kerosene-based jet fuels combine “good combustion characteristics and a high energy content.” The downside is that a round-trip flight between London and San Francisco has a carbon footprint per economy ticket of one tonne of CO2.

According to BP, the refined version of SAF “is very similar in its chemistry to traditional fossil jet fuel.” This is critical because of the high energy density needed to push heavily loaded planes around the world.

One example is the Airbus A380. It has a maximum takeoff weight (MTOW) of more than 600 tonnes, or 1,268,000 lbs., including more than 300 tonnes of fuel. In 2020, a new Emirates A380 was delivered to Dubai flying on a mix of conventional jet fuel and biofuel made from used cooking oil in Finland.

First used by the industry in 2008, such SAF has powered over 300,000 flights around the world. But despite the promise of SAF, Reuters notes that its cost “is currently up to 8 times higher than regular jet fuel.” There is also a limited availability of feedstock.

Nonetheless, Shell says that SAF will make up 10% of its global aviation fuel sales by 2030. The company is building a biofuels processing plant in Rotterdam with an annual capability of 820,000 tonnes. Shell is also developing synthetic SAF made from hydrogen and recycled carbon.

Such challenges are why SAF currently accounts for less than 0.1% of the aviation fuel market. Shell’s manufacturing contribution would represent a more than ten-fold increase over today’s total global output of sustainable fuel. But with the lack of alternative power sources, “Sustainable aviation fuel, whether bio SAF or synthetic SAF, remains the single biggest solution,” Anna Mascolo, head of Shell Aviation, told Reuters.

In 2018, Sir Richard Branson met a Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747 at London Gatwick following a flight from Orlando, Florida. Power for the since-departed 747 (Virgin scrapped them in 2020) was provided by a blend of conventional jet fuel and biofuel made from industrial waste gases converted into ethanol.

There have been many such ‘one-off’ SAF-fueled flights, encapsulating both the promise and the problem of biofuels. Can airlines and the military get a consistent supply of jet-rated used cooking oil?

The challenge is to manufacture sustainable aviation fuel at scale. Otherwise, even carbon-cutting committed passengers might well balk at an 800% fuel surcharge on future airline tickets.
Source: Forbes

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