The reason that discount airlines tend to rank higher is hard to celebrate, even for the most climate-conscious travellers. While other factors contribute meaningfully to reducing emissions, low-cost airlines perform best because they tend to squeeze more people onto their planes.

Cirium’s analysis shows that increasing the number of passengers is currently the number-one way to decrease the carbon intensity of flying. Densely packed planes have lower per-passenger carbon emissions for the same reason that carpooling is a climate solution. By the same token, flying business class triples the carbon intensity of plane travel compared to economy seats.

“Airlines now face a genuine tension between passenger comfort and environmental performance,” Mike Malik, Cirium’s chief marketing officer, said at a presentation for journalists.

Closer quarters aren’t the only reason budget airlines perform better on emissions intensity. Low-cost carriers also tend to use newer airplanes with better fuel efficiency. “Seat density and fleet age matter more than almost any other factor airlines can control,” Malik wrote in the report.

“Because they want to be efficient, they renew their fleets more often,” says Olivier Paillot, general manager for the Americas at OpenAirlines, a software company that specializes in fuel savings. “OpenAirlines has 80 airlines using our solution, and of those, the low-cost airlines are by far the most efficient.”

The intricate path to emissions reductions

To calculate carbon intensity, Cirium uses a metric called “available seat kilometres” (ASK), which multiplies the number of available seats by the distance travelled. By this measurement, Wizz Air of Hungary takes top spot in the global ranking with 53.9 grams of carbon dioxide per ASK. Frontier Airlines in the United States came second, followed by Pegasus in Turkey.

Looking only at the world largest airlines, Ireland’s Ryanair was number one, with an ASK of 63. Southwest Airlines and Delta Airlines were second and third in this category, at 68.9 and 74.4 respectively.

Canada’s most carbon-efficient carrier is Flair Airlines with an ASK of 55.5. WestJet’s is 65.4, and Air Canada’s is 68.1.

RELATED

As air travel booms, can the aviation industry decarbonize for real?

Report says big companies are doing carbon removal all wrong

How subsidized leasing can drive EV adoption

Cirium uses a modelling tool called Emerald Sky to calculate airline emissions, which draws on a wide variety of data about aircraft design, passenger and cargo loads, flight operations and more. Emerald Sky is accredited by the Rocky Mountain Institute under the Pegasus Guidelines, an emissions measurement and reporting standard for the aviation sector. The comparisons are validated for use by banks and financiers for net-zero-aligned investing strategies.

There are other ways that airlines can effectively bring down their emissions, such as by making subtle adjustments to flight operations. OpenAirlines shows airlines how to find small efficiencies that together add up to larger savings, such as by adjusting how the plane ascends and descends, turning off one engine after the plane has landed, removing magazines and screens to eliminate weight, and more. Altogether, Paillot says the company can help airlines achieve up to a 5% reduction in fuel consumption.

Operational efficiencies are the fastest and easiest to deploy, Paillot says: “The fuel that’s saved, it’s saved today.”

Notably, the use of sustainable aviation fuels, or SAFs, was not a distinguishing factor in the Cirium ranking, because they currently account for only 0.53% of fuel demand. Even so, the International Air Transport Association’s plan to reach net-zero carbon emissions relies heavily on SAFs. According to the resolution passed in 2021, advanced biofuels and other alternative fuels are supposed to contribute 65% of the reductions in emissions by 2050.

Mark Mann is the associate editor at Corporate Knights. He is based in Montreal.

The post The secret to lowering airline emissions? Less leg room appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Passenger jets have voracious appetites. A Boeing 747 will burn about four litres of fuel every second. Assuming the tanks are topped up, the fuel alone weighs almost as much as the empty plane. A single transatlantic round trip produces the equivalent of one tonne of carbon dioxide per passenger, according to the British oil company BP.

You get the idea. Aviation’s share of global greenhouse gas emissions may seem trivial, at about 2.5%, but the figure will rise as air travel becomes more popular – the industry’s growth has always exceeded its efficiency gains. If airlines are to meet their net-zero commitments by 2050 – a goal set in 2021 by the industry’s trade association, the International Air Transport Association – they will have to find a substitute for fossil fuels fairly quickly.

But how? You cannot fly a large passenger plane on battery power – a 250-seat airborne Tesla seems like a fantasy at this point. Ditto commercial hydrogen-powered planes or those that run on synthetic fuels. While work on these technologies is underway (Rolls-Royce recently made a big to-do of testing a green hydrogen-fuelled jet engine), they may not become commercially viable for decades. “For the foreseeable future, these technologies will not be the solution,” says Fatima da Gloria, vice-president of sustainability at Air France-KLM. “So SAF are very important to us, and we expect them to remain complementary with hydrogen solutions.”

“SAF” stands for “sustainable aviation fuel.” Neste is well aware of the aviation industry’s epic decarbonization difficulties and is gambling much of its future on transportation biofuels.

The oil industry pioneer is now the leading supplier of SAF, which is made from forestry and agricultural waste, used cooking oil and – contentiously – palm oil and animal fats. The company’s SAF is being bought by airlines around the world, including Canada’s WestJet and Air France-KLM, which in October signed an eight-year contract to buy one million tonnes (1.3 billion litres). The French-Dutch airline group is buying another 600,000 tonnes from DG Fuels of the United States, making it the airline industry’s top buyer of biofuels.

Air France-KLM claims that the use of SAF will avoid 4.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions on a full life-cycle basis. That’s because Neste claims its SAF reduces planet-warming emissions by up to 80% compared to regular fossil fuels. The theory is that the plants used to make biofuels absorb carbon dioxide as they grow. Once the plants are converted to burnable fuel, the carbon dioxide emitted balances out the carbon dioxide absorbed.

SAF sounds like a godsend to airlines. Burning the fuel in jets requires no modifications to their engines. It is just mixed with regular kerosene in the same way that corn-based ethanol is mixed with gasoline in the United States and Canada. SAF does not require unique delivery infrastructure, and the costs, while three to four times higher than regular fuel, will come down as SAF production increases and economies of scale kick in.

So what’s not to like? More than a little, it turns out.

The SAF volumes are small and will remain small, relatively speaking, even as production ramps up. In 2021, total SAF production represented a mere 0.01% of jet fuel consumed worldwide. Air France-KLM’s goal is to see 10% of its fuel made from SAF by 2030 as part of its drive to cut carbon dioxide emissions per passenger per kilometre flown by 30% by 2030 over 2019’s level. “Decarbonization is the biggest challenge the aviation industry has ever faced,” the airline group’s Canadian chief executive, Ben Smith, said in a statement when announcing the Neste purchase.

In other words, SAF on its own will never turn air travel fully green. And any biofuel’s green credentials are never as great as advertised. Feeding crops such as corn or palm oil to planes or cars or trucks comes with a lot of environmental and political baggage, all the more so today, when food prices are soaring. Shouldn’t all that land, or at least the land that can be agriculturally productive, be growing food to feed the hungry instead?

But SAF represents nothing less than a revolution – and a profitable one – for Neste. Its remarkable reinvention somewhat resembles that of Ørsted, the Danish power-generation company that once burned obscene amounts of coal, blackening the skies, to keep the country’s lights on.

In 2008, under enlightened management that saw the potential of emissions-free electricity, Ørsted began transforming itself into a renewable energy powerhouse. It replaced its grubby fossil-fuel plants with offshore wind farms that would eventually make it the top player in that industry. Along the way, it became a stock market darling and an inspiration to other companies contemplating a black-to-green transformation.

Neste – “liquid” in Finnish – is on a similar trajectory.

The liquid that gave the company its name is oil. Neste was founded in 1948 as the state petroleum refiner in Espoo, just outside of Helsinki. Neste began tinkering with renewable diesel fuel in 1990s and, by 2010 later, launched the world’s biggest renewable diesel plant, in Singapore. About the same time, it built a renewable fuels plant in Rotterdam, Europe’s largest.

Today, Neste is the top producer of sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel, but, unlike Ørsted, hydrocarbons remain at the core of its business. Its Porvoo refinery in Finland transforms more than 200,000 barrels of oil a day into diesel, gasoline and low-sulphur marine bunker fuels. But its future is in renewable fuels. Already, about 90% of its profits come from renewables, even if oil refining remains by far its highest-volume business. “We are clearly looking for growth in renewable and circular solutions,” says CEO Matti Lehmus, who trained as a chemical engineer. “Renewable diesel and SAF are decarbonization solutions that are available today.”

Neste’s transformation may see Porvoo, one of northern Europe’s largest oil refineries, converted into a renewable fuels operation in the middle part of the next decade; Porvoo is undergoing a strategic review. If it ceases to refine fossil fuels, Neste, like Ørsted, will have almost fully buried its hydrocarbon past. Investors appear to like the message. Neste shares have been trending up for years and rose 37% in 2022 (as of November 29), giving the company a market value of €37 billion. Over the past five years, Neste’s stock is up 138% versus 11% for its fossil-fuel-focused benchmark (S&P Europe BMI Energy Index EUR, as of November 29, 2022).

Neste’s rise into a biofuels powerhouse has not been glitch-free. A lot of the time, it has been in the news for reasons that make management cringe. In May 2022, Carlos Calvo Ambel, a senior director of the Transport & Environment environmental campaign group, called the band Coldplay “useful idiots for greenwashing” Neste’s image.

The accusation came after Coldplay signed a deal with Neste to provide SAF and renewable diesel to cut its concert tour emissions by half. A 2020 Profundo research report commissioned by Friends of the Earth Netherlands determined that Neste’s palm oil suppliers were responsible for 10,000 hectares of deforestation between early 2019 and mid-2020. Most of Neste’s palm oil comes from Indonesia and Malaysia.

In response to the Profundo report, Neste said that “we acknowledge the fact that there are sustainability concerns linked to the palm oil industry” but said that it was careful not to buy fuel whose feedstock comes from plantations involved in deforestation. The company says that “claims on Neste’s suppliers being linked to deforestation were proven not to be true in lengthy investigations involving also satellite imaging and third party experts.”

Despite monitoring its supply chain carefully to ensure that orangutans in Indonesia are not being threatened so that SAF can fill aircraft tanks, Neste plans to eliminate palm oil from its mix by the end of 2023. Doing so will not put Neste in distress, since, at last count, palm oil supplied only 7% of the company’s biofuel raw materials.

Neste knows that current SAF solutions will never be able to provide 100% of the fuel for the aviation industry – there simply isn’t enough renewable feedstock on the planet to ensure that. Neste says it’s looking for new solutions to expand its feedstock base and ensure the potential for future growth. It also believes that SAF and renewable diesel can play a crucial bridging role in the long decarbonization process. Lehmus says the company plans to double its renewable fuels capacity by 2026 (in 2021, production was more than three million tonnes) while it tries to develop new technologies. “I see a lot of long-term potential in new technologies,” he says.

In other words, biofuels are a step along the way, not the ultimate solution to rising aviation emissions. Their existence at least proves the airlines know they have to clean up their act.

Eric Reguly is the European bureau chief for The Globe and Mail and is based in Rome.

The post Oil industry pioneer wants to lead sustainable aviation revolution. Will it take off? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In 2021, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) set a target for the aviation industry to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. With the sector contributing 2.8% of the world’s total carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion, many airlines are considering carbon-capture-and-storage technologies and electric-powered planes. But these innovations may be years away from becoming scalable solutions. Sustainable aviation fuels (or SAFs), however, are an immediate tool that could help airlines kick-start their green transition.

“The use of SAF is expected to contribute around 65% of the reduction in emissions needed by aviation to reach net-zero in 2050,” says Albert Tjoeng, head of corporate communications for the IATA, which defines an SAF as a non-fossil fuel that has the potential to generate lower carbon emissions than conventional kerosene in its life cycle.

In April, Air Canada committed to investing $50 million in SAFs and other carbon-reducing technologies. And according to IATA, more than 50 airlines around the world have used sustainable fuels.

“Airlines bought every drop of SAF available in 2021,” Tjoeng says. “So airlines want to use SAF. The issue is the supply.”

At the moment, industry standards state that . Scientific trials to prove that aircraft can safely run on a solution that’s 100% sustainable are in the works.

There are a number of sustainable alternatives, some commercially available, some in development. Here’s what could be an eco-friendly power source on your next flight:

Cooking oils

Oils and fats are currently the most accessible option, according to Bradley Saville, a professor at the University of Toronto in the school’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry.

“There’s a lot of growth where you’re seeing refineries being reconfigured because it’s low-cost and the infrastructure required for production is perfectly aligned with existing oil refinery technology,” he says. “The compatibility makes it a very attractive initial pathway.”

In the Netherlands, for example, Neste, an oil refining company, has a partnership with McDonald’s. Since 2020, Neste has picked up used cooking oil from 252 of the fast-food restaurants and refines it into fuel.

Dutch airline KLM has been viewed as a trailblazer for its use of cooking oil as fuel on a commercial flight in 2010. One year later, it scheduled more than 200 trial flights between Paris and Amsterdam using biofuel made from used cooking oil. Lufthansa and Continental Airlines followed suit shortly after.

Saville, who has also been assessing sustainable-fuel life-cycle emissions for the United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization, says that oils can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 to 90% compared to fossil fuels.

But to be truly sustainable, Saville adds that the best way to produce this fuel is to use excess or unwanted oil and fat that doesn’t pass food-grade standards instead of growing crops specifically for fuel.

His models also show used oil and fat being the cheapest to produce, at US$1,200 to $1,300 per ton.

Biomass and municipal waste

Saville says that biomass, made from algae, crop residues, animal waste, forestry residue and municipal waste, could also have big potential as an aviation fuel.

“If you look to crop and forest residue and leave just the right amount behind to promote good soil quality, you could replace a fairly high percentage of jet fuel,” he says. “Then with municipal solid waste, you’re solving a waste problem and turning it into energy.”

Biomass has the same 80 to 90% reduction as used oils but come at a slightly higher production cost, at US$1,800 to $1,900 per ton. This is one barrier to implementation, Saville explains, and one reason why these fuels are in short supply. Unlike with waste oils, the infrastructure transition isn’t as seamless and supply chains aren’t set up to source and deliver on this in a big way, he adds.

In 2021, United Airlines used jet fuel made from agricultural waste such as corncobs and corn stalks in a normal passenger flight. And in 2016, the airline and Los Angeles International Airport made a pledge to purchase up to 15 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuel using agricultural waste and non-edible natural oils over a three-year period. Saville considers the airline a leader in this sense, noting it has been the only airline that has consistently made other offtake agreements with fuel producers.

In 2017, British Airlines partnered with U.S.-based Solena Fuels to make and use jet fuel from municipal solid waste. It was the first project in the world to attempt to convert municipal waste into a fuel for airplanes.

Synthetic kerosene

Synthetic kerosene, also known as e-kerosene or power-to-liquid, might show the most promise in terms of its ability to reduce the airline industry’s carbon footprint. It is made by combining hydrogen and carbon dioxide. If the hydrogen is generated using renewable electricity (known as green hydrogen) and the carbon dioxide is captured from the atmosphere, models have shown it to have zero, or very close to zero, carbon emissions.

This is a sustainable fuel that is in the earliest stages of development and implementation.

British energy giant Shell is working on establishing synthetic kerosene operations in Germany and the Netherlands. It produced 500 litres of e-kerosene over three months for a KLM flight in February 2021, from Amsterdam to Madrid, that blended the e-kerosene with conventional fuel.

In October 2021, German non-profit atmosfair opened the first production plant, aiming to produce a carbon-neutral product. Lufthansa announced at the time that it had agreed to buy 25,000 litres of the fuel each year for five years. The fuel will be mixed with conventional kerosene.

Then in June, Airbus, Uniper, Siemens Energy and Sasol also announced that they were partnering to open an e-kerosene production facility in Hamburg that would be operational in 2026.

Saville says he can’t provide cost estimates at this time, but numbers provided by the Dutch Ministry for Infrastructure and Water Management in 2021 calculated a production price tag ranging from €1,500 to €6,800 per tonne, which translates to US$1,800 to $8,200.

What Saville does project, however, is that these options will be mainstream in the next seven or eight years.

“We’ll just be scratching the surface, but we’ll be on a clearer path,” he says. “It will be important for broader policy support and cooperation to take place amongst a bunch of different stakeholders and federal government. This will ensure we can increase production and build the infrastructure.”

The post Three sustainable fuels that could be the future of green aviation appeared first on Corporate Knights.