Alongside the associations Transport & Environment, WWF, and the Climate Action Network - France, several airlines, including Easyjet, Air France, and KLM, called on the European Commission on Wednesday 13 January to present a regulatory framework on sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) that is “transparent, future proof, and has a set of robust criteria”.
The ReFuelEU Aviation legislative initiative on these fuels has been announced for 2021 (see EUROPE 12616/12). Their use in the EU is now estimated at around 0.05% of total aviation fuel consumption, according to the commission.
Among the demands of the associations and airlines - brought together for the occasion in a project called Fuelling Flight - is the exclusion of raw materials and biofuels from dedicated cropland, as these “compete with the production of food or feed for livestock or carbon sequestration from reforestation”, explain the signatories.
For their part, they spoke in favour of priority being given to SAF made from waste (used oils, agricultural residues, etc.), which are the only ones likely to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
They also called on the Commission to encourage only using SAF and raw materials originating in the EU. Most of the SAF currently in use are imported from or stored in non-Member States, again according to Commission data.
Consult the Fuelling Flight project declaration: https://bit.ly/38CDoAf (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)