Sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF for short. This is a hot topic right now, with Air France's first long-haul flight between Paris and Montreal using FAS. 16 % of sustainable fuel in parallel with conventional paraffin. This avoided 20 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
At a time when aircraft manufacturers and carriers are seeking solutions to limit their environmental impact and move towards zero net emissionsShell Aviation, one of the main suppliers of fuel to the airline industry, and one of its major users through its thousands of corporate customers, American Express Global Business Travel (GBT).
While hydrogen-powered or even electric aircraft won't be flying before the middle of the century, SAF seems to be the only viable option at present for reducing the sector's emissions in the short and medium term. " FAS has incredible potential to boosting decarbonisation of the aviation sector" says Anna Mascolo, President of Shell Aviation. This alliance aims to increase the use of these environmentally-friendly fuels and boost production. " If the aviation sector wants more SAF by 2025, major new investments are needed as of today" said Anna Mascolo, explaining the reasons for the partnership with GBT.
Because, like all emerging technologies, it is still in its infancy, sustainable aviation fuel is expensive. One of Shell's competitors, Total CEO Patrick Pouyanné, noted in a recent article quoted by AFP that ". Jet fuel costs 400 euros a tonne, while biofuel costs 1,500. On a Paris-New York flight, if we put 1% of biofuel in a plane, it will increase the price of the return ticket by 5 dollars.. "
The alliance between Shell and Amex GBT is designed to make it more accessible. by combining the purchasing power of airlines and GBT's corporate customers in the business travel sector. A process of aggregation that creates a much broader demand, with the more detailed terms of this collaboration to be announced later this year. " We believe that pooling demand from businesses and airlines is the most effective way of generating the volume of investment needed to bring about large-scale change." says GBT CEO Paul Abbott.
According to the targets it has set itself, Shell could produce eight times more low-carbon fuels by 2030, and increase the share of biofuels to more than 10 % and hydrogen in the transport fuels it sells. This compares with around 3 % in 2020. It should be noted that French legislation provides for the incorporation of 1% of biofuel on all flights departing from France from 2022, and could increase this figure to 2 % by 2025 and 5 % by 2030, in line with targets set at European level.
