How trash could help curb airline emissions - The Washington Post

How trash could help curb airline emissions - The Washington Post
United Airlines wants you to fly on airplanes fueled by old socks, rancid pistachio shells and leftover french-fry oil rather than petroleum. And it’s asking you for a little cash to help. To get there, it’s working alongside Air Canada, Boeing, GE Aerospace, JPMorgan Chase and Honeywell to create a supply chain of sustainable fuel they are betting will save the industry in the era of climate change. And they’re looking for one more critical investor: the flying public. United is giving customers the option to contribute to its fund —$1, $3.50 or $7 — every time they buy a ticket. The airline says it’s offering fliers a way to finance a climate solution. Should you buy in? Since flying is by far most Americans’ largest source of emissions, I went in search of an answer. Sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, is the most promising way for the aviation industry to replace fossil fuels in aircraft — and for you to feel better about flying. So far, there is no good way to reduce aviation emissions. Right now, the industry is responsible for about 4 percent of global warming. Its emissions could more than double as people jump on cheap flights, especially in countries that did not have them, the World Economic Forum estimates. But many carbon offsets sold by the airline industry don’t deliver on their promise, according to investigations by Greenpeace, Carbon Market Watch and others. Aircraft efficiency gains have been eclipsed by more air travel. And while companies are testing planes that run on clean electricity or hydrogen, replacing the entire commercial fleet could take decades. SAF, however, is billed as a “drop-in” replacement fuel. Jet engines need no modifications to burn it. It can come from cooking oil, corn, soybeans, algae, wood and even cities’ solid waste streams. Refineries turn this organic matter into a fuel by heating it up and then removing impurities. The product is virtually identical to the kerosene now used as jet fuel. Depending on the source, SAF can reduce net emissions from aviation by more than 85 percent compared to petroleum. The Energy Department says it’s the best option on the table to reach the country’s goal for net-zero emissions by 2050. “To meet decarbonization goals we have tied to aviation,” says Valerie Sarisky-Reed, who leads the Energy Department’s bioenergy technologies office, “it is essential to ramp up production of sustainable aviation fuel.” Already, anyone on a United flight leaving Los Angeles International Airport soars aloft on a little bit of french-fry oil. It’s not much: about 20 gallons of SAF per flight in 2022. But the airport is one of only a few in the world to refuel aircraft with SAF. Since 2016, more than 60 billion passenger miles on United flights have flown on the fuel. The supply is severely limited. Almost all SAF today is sourced from food waste — mostly fats, oils and grease collected from restaurants and industrial kitchens. With only a few refiners in the United States, the total supply amounts to about 15 million gallons, or less than 0.1 percent of the fuel burned by the aviation industry annually. Most of this is snapped up by large corporate customers like FedEx, Microsoft and others that use it to address emissions from their business travel. In addition, SAF remains two to four times more expensive than conventional jet fuel. That could raise the price of a flight across the country by more than $100. Simply charging more isn’t possible in the cutthroat commercial aviation industry: Most Americans are unwilling to pay more to fly on their preferred airline or even escape a middle seat, analysts say, let alone pay for their carbon emissions. To lower SAF prices, the Energy Department and other federal agencies want to scale up the industry. They have set a national goal of producing 3 billion gallons of SAF per year by 2030 and 35 billion gallons by mid-century, enough to meet all expected U.S. demand. The Biden administration also promises $4 billion in federal backing to support aviation fuel projects and fuel producers over the coming years. The aviation industry has been slow to invest in this vision, says Jo Dardenne, aviation director of the European nonprofit Transport & Environment. Most airlines have yet to place firm orders at viable prices, so SAF producers haven’t invested in enough new capacity or research into sustainable feedstocks. So far, United says it has 3 billion gallons of advance orders for SAF, the most of any airline. The Sustainable Flight Fund will back fuel producers and purchase agreements for billions of additional gallons of SAF over the coming years. Eventually, United wants to move beyond biofuel and generate SAF from electricity, a power-to-liquids process that pulls carbon straight out of the air. The goal is to reduce its GHG emissions 100 percent without relying on traditional carbon offsets by 2050. “SAF is the solution that will decarbonize aviation,” says Lauren Riley, United’s chief sustainability officer. “The supply doesn’t really exist. We’re just behind the curve.” But it will take more than a few extra dollars per passenger to transition to SAF. The International Civil Aviation Organization — the U.N. agency that coordinates international air travel — puts the global cost at $121 billion per year until 2050 to switch to sustainable fuels and make efficiency improvements. If everyone who flew the airline last year contributed $3.50, United estimates it could build a half-billion-dollar refinery that would triple today’s supply of SAF. Yet Riley, the company executive, admits passengers won’t come close to financing United’s ambitions. The real reason it’s launching its SAF campaign is to change expectations. “We’re trying to get our consumers to want to ask more,” she says. “I would be happy if we had several thousand or a million or so customers throw a dollar in because they clicked through to say, ‘What is SAF and why should I care?’ That allows us to start a dialogue about what we’re trying to do and build a marketplace for SAF.” Ned Molloy, a transport and climate policy consultant based in London, said the airline industry, not fliers, should foot the bill. “Aviation needs to invest as much in e-fuels as the car industry is investing in electric vehicles,” he says, pointing to the $515 billion global automakers are planning to spend on electrification, EVs and batteries through 2030. By comparison, United’s $100 million investment appears small. Even a plan by the parent company of British Airways to invest $400 million in SAF over the next 20 years probably represents less than 0.1 percent of its annual revenue if spread out evenly over that period, says Molloy. But Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst at Atmosphere Research Group, said airlines operate on much thinner profit margins than automakers on their own. He thinks a combination of government incentives and escalating political and economic pressure on the industry will drive change. “I would never tell someone who wants to contribute not to do so, if it’s important to them,” says Harteveldt. “But it may be more effective to reach out to our elected officials, institutional shareholders, the airlines’ boards and C-suite executives and say we expect to see this change and we will hold airlines accountable.” Still, he sees United’s overall effort as a sign that airlines are serious about jump-starting an essential industry they’ve largely ignored. And others are sending the same signal, if faintly. Lufthansa is now offering more expensive green fares for “CO2-neutral flying” through a combination of 20 percent SAF and 80 offsets. American Airlines and JetBlue inked a deal to fuel a sliver of their operations out of San Francisco International Airport with SAF. Delta Air Lines signed a deal last year with Gevo to buy 75 million gallons of advanced renewable biofuels from corn each year. And Southwest Airlines is the first to use the fuel at Oakland’s airport. Even in a best-case scenario, however, most aircraft will have to keep burning fossil fuels for the next few decades. For some people, that will mean flying less or not at all. “The only sustainable way to fly today is not to fly,” says Transport & Environment’s Dardenne.