The sustainable aviation journey so far and what's ahead

The Journey So Far 

For the last two and a half years I’ve had the honour of chairing the UK’s “Sustainable Aviation” coalition. As my term comes to an end, I wanted to reflect on where UK aviation is on its journey to net zero. Spoiler alert, if you just want the headlines: doing OK, a huge amount still to do! 

I’ve worked on climate change for my whole career. I joined the aviation sector in the mid-2000s. In that post-Kyoto-agreement and pre-global financial meltdown era, the world was still riding the first wave of climate concern. UK aviation was under pressure on carbon and was starting to take the lead. When Sustainable Aviation (SA) was launched in 2005, it marked the first time airlines, airports, and manufacturers had come together to set joint targets and plans.    

In the twenty years since, as evidence has mounted of just how existential climate change is, it has moved from being “a” significant risk to “the most” significant mid-term risk for aviation. You can chart the inflexion points on that journey. The 2008 introduction of UK carbon budgets. The 2015 Paris Summit with its agreement to aim for 1.5 degrees. The UK’s net zero legislation in 2019. The 80% target before 2019 had left room for hard-to-abate sectors to lay claim to being part of the 20% of remaining carbon. There’s no wriggle room with a zero target.    

International Airlines Group was the first major airline to back net zero in 2019. The whole UK sector set that goal in early 2020. I remember well the fraught conversations with colleagues in the global aviation sector at the time. Net zero was too difficult. Even if the industry set the goal, we wouldn’t get governments on board. Some accused us of “breaking ranks” with the industry consensus that halving emissions was enough. But by late 2022 the dominos had fallen – individual companies, then global trade groups and then the world’s governments at ICAO backed net zero aviation by 2050.    

It was clear that while Covid was tough, climate change would be much tougher. I’m proud that government and industry kept the focus on carbon even in the depths of the pandemic. Summer 2020 saw the first meeting of the UK’s “Jet Zero Council”. In 2022 Heathrow published its net zero plan, with ambitious goals to cut absolute carbon this decade and to make 2019 “the year of peak carbon”.     

The early 2020s was very much the era of making net zero commitments and publishing plans. We're now into delivery. That’s tougher. So how are we doing? If you were answering this in a corporate “RAG” status – red, amber or green - you’d be giving an “A” overall: plans in place but more work to do.   

The State of the (Avi)Nation  

The good news is that we know the solutions. Our challenge now is to scale them, at speed. Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), a lower life-cycle carbon fuel that’s a drop-in replacement for kerosene, is the key solution we need to scale up. In the many government, industry and NGO roadmaps now published around the world, it’s the single biggest solution – representing up to 70% of the total journey to net zero.    

This year, about 1.5 million tonnes of SAF is forecast to be produced. That’s about 0.5% of total kerosene use. That’s a small percentage, sure, but every net zero technology starts somewhere. A couple of decades ago renewables provided a tiny percentage of the UK’s electricity. Roll forward and with the right policies and investment today it’s nearly half. Those policies are starting to be implemented on SAF – typically a blend of carrots (tax incentives or price support) and sticks (mandates to drive demand). Globally, 44 countries covering 65% of demand are implementing or considering policy – for those with detailed measures, 21m tonnes of SAF would be needed in 2030. That’s about 13 times more than we’re expecting this year - hence the mantra of scaling, at speed.     

At Heathrow, we’ve shown that where you get the financial incentives right, you can get SAF flowing. Our landing charge incentive, which helps close the price gap with kerosene, is targeting 2.5% SAF at Heathrow this year, or around 150,000 tonnes. The scheme has been fully subscribed to by airlines. If we hit those numbers by year-end, 10% of global SAF use will have been at Heathrow.      

We, as a nation and industry, need to keep moving on several fronts though:   

• Modernising airspace – so we don’t waste fuel through inefficient routes – great to see this in the new Government’s manifesto.    

• Industry and government R&D to continue to develop more efficient aircraft and engines.  

• Developing zero-emissions hydrogen aircraft. The next generations of Boeing and Airbus narrowbody jets that enter service in the 30s look likely to be conventionally fuelled and will be flying well after 2050, underlining how critical SAF is. However, hydrogen has the potential to play a significant and exciting role in the second half of the century.    

• Prioritising waste to make SAF, a much more efficient use than burning it to make electricity.   

• Supporting the development of carbon removals – natural and engineered – a vital part of aviation’s net zero plans. 

The Farnborough Airshow  

The biennial Farnborough Airshow this week was a reminder of the technical expertise and economic contribution of UK aerospace. It's one of the jewels in the crown of UK manufacturing. Sustainability has now become a major theme at the event. It's the focus of one of the five days of the airshow and the subject of a host of roundtables, panels and announcements throughout the week.   

Along with twenty or so airline, OEM and fuel producer CEOs and CSOs, I joined a roundtable on SAF hosted by the UK's Secretary of State for Transport, Louise Haigh. She confirmed that the new Labour administration will move ahead quickly to implement a SAF mandate from 1 January 2025. This was welcome news and will drive demand for SAF. The Secretary of State and her team also heard a strong welcome of plans for the complementary Revenue Certainty Mechanism (RCM) and a strong call to put that into law as soon as possible. The inclusion of the RCM in the King's Speech last week sent a positive signal - but for Final Investment Decisions to be taken, we need the RCM in law. The industry thinks that is possible by late 2025 - once those decisions are taken, we'll start seeing spades in the ground across the nations and regions of the UK. This is exciting stuff - green jobs and growth in action.   

I then joined a panel hosted by Boeing and ICF on the role of SAF roadmaps in setting out what industry and government need to do to scale SAF. Sustainable Aviation's latest Net Zero Roadmap published in April 2023 shows that 75% of the UK's aviation fuel needs could be met by SAF by 2050, two-thirds of that domestically produced. Government policy is the key "unlock" - sending the market signals needed to drive demand and investment. We're starting to see that policy fall into place in the UK but need to keep the focus up.  

Listening to Campbell Wilson, Air India’s CEO, at the Airline Leaders Summit that opened Farnborough this week, underlined how important it is to move at pace to scale up low carbon solutions for aviation. Indian aviation is growing fast and that’s set to continue. Well over 1000 planes are on order. And Indian propensity to travel is about one-tenth of the level in China, so the orders are likely to keep coming. Air travel is integral to economies and societies around the world. So, it’s no surprise that as those economies and societies grow and develop, air travel grows with them. But to protect the benefits of aviation for the future, we need to take the carbon out of flying.    

 The Next Chapter 

On Tuesday, Boeing announced a consortium with sustainable aviation financier Clear Sky and shared plans to support SAF developer Firefly Green Fuels as the first beneficiary of their partnership. Firefly plans to create a UK refinery that will transform sewage waste into SAF, which will have a 90% lower lifecycle carbon footprint than fossil fuel-based kerosene. Firefly’s CEO James Hygate’s sentiment rings true: “where there’s people, there’s feedstock”.  

As SA approaches its twentieth anniversary, I’m delighted to hand over the chair-ship to Neil Robinson, Chief Sustainability Officer at MAG. I’m also delighted that we are shortly to announce the appointment of SA's first full-time CEO. This newly created role recognises both the significance of the net zero agenda, but also how fundamental cross-sector partnership is to deliver that. Watch this space for more details! 

#sustainableaviatoin #netzero #SAF #aviation  

Louise Haigh MP Stef Lehmann Julie Kitcher Dr Rannia Leontaridi OBE Sean Doyle Holly Boyd-Boland Jane Thompson Brian Moran Steven Gillard Debbie Stockwell Yasar M. Yetiskin Mark Pilling Jonathon Counsell Tim Alderslade Karen Dee Kevin Goddard Ann-Therese Farmer Paul Greenwood Shai Weiss Gaynor Hartnell Alan Newby Kevin Craven James Hygate Krishnan Narayanan