Flying without Fossil Fuel

Fueled by the abundance of oil, long perceived as inexhaustible, civil aviation has established itself in half a century as one of the most powerful drivers of the internationalization of trade.
Today, it holds a dizzying promise: to connect, in a few hours, almost any major hub on the globe, thus creating unprecedented geographical and economic continuity. The operation and development of air routes still rely entirely on fossil fuels, which now places the sector facing a double carbon constraint: on the one hand, the worsening climate change demands a rapid reduction in its emissions; on the other hand, the current geopolitical deadlock and the impending decline of oil threaten its supply.
Since our previous report "Flying in 2050", industry has been working on disruptive technologies based on alternative energies such as hydrogen, but has pushed the timeframe well beyond 2035.

Timeline

Final report release: February 3.

Registration link: https://theshiftproject.org/evenements/pouvoir-voler-sans-petrole/

Summary

The document begins with a presentation of SAF and the main production pathways and industry sectors, before going on to quantify the volumes produced and expected for each of them, as well as the associated challenges and limitations, in a second section. All these data are then put to use in a third chapter dedicated to scenarios, proposing various projections up to 2050, before a detailed overview of the situation specific to France in the fourth and final section.

Unsurprisingly, at least when one is familiar with the Flying in 2050 report, the trajectories proposed by the sector's institutions (ICAO, ATAG, Waypoint, GIFAS, etc.) are extremely optimistic, not to say utopian. Given the estimated SAF volumes available between now and 2050, maintaining an average annual GHG emission level below that of 2019 over the next 25 years already seems ambitious.