The aviation industry’s fiercest fight over the next decade may not be over passengers, but over used frying oil from fryers in restaurants around the world.
As travelers around the world grapple with face mask mandates and travel restrictions, airlines have quietly pledged to buy billions of gallons of next-generation aviation gasoline called Sustainable Aviation Fuel . It is mostly made, at least for now, from used cooking oils and other waste fats.
According to researchers and airlines, the fuel has a carbon footprint about 80% lower than standard jet fuel because it is made from recycled sources and does not extract new oil from the ground. And the future is limitless because, at least in theory, sustainable aviation fuel can be made from anything from cooking oil and trees to old trash and algae.
American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and the other four largest airlines in the nation have pledged to purchase 3.8 billion gallons of sustainable aviation fuel over the next decade-plus, if and when the production industry of fuel is actually discovering how to do the same.
The Biden administration is spearheading efforts to develop a viable industry for sustainable aviation fuel, and the European Union has proposed next-generation fuel to make up about 5% of everything that goes into fuel tanks. fuel for jet aircraft by 2030. With sustainable aviation fuel, the emissions out of the plane are the same as regular kerosene, but the overall carbon footprint is lower because it recycles used oil, said airline executives and experts.
Airlines face pressure from more than nature-loving executives and tree-hugging passengers. Many players in industry and the financial world believe that a kind of carbon tax could be imposed in the next few years. And the boards of companies that pay lucrative business traveler fares are pledging to reduce carbon footprints, pressuring companies to reduce the environmental impact of things such as travel.
Dallas-based Southwest and Fort Worth-based American Airlines are among those in the industry that have pledged to be carbon neutral by 2025, though the path to getting there is uncertain. .
“It’s becoming increasingly important to our corporate customers and the contracts we sign,” Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan said in a November interview. “It shows in the world of investors.”
Sustainable aviation fuel is the industry’s only option over the next few decades to drastically reduce the carbon footprint. Other options, such as electric planes or hydrogen engines, are still in the theoretical stage and require decades more to be developed, even with the support of major players such as Boeing, Airbus and GE Aviation.
Sustainable aviation fuel, on the other hand, is chemically identical to jet fuel and can be put directly into existing aircraft without modification or blended with existing fossil fuels.
This puts a lot of pressure on the sustainable aviation fuel industry, which only produced around 26 million gallons of fuel worldwide in 2021, less than 0.2% of the amount of jet fuel used. by US airlines alone last year, according to the International Air Transport Association. Even mainstream proponents claim that producers of sustainable aviation fuel are decades behind the kind of research and efficiency of their counterparts in the fossil fuel industry.
And with current technologies consuming the sources used for most production, sustainable aviation fuels will struggle to meet the modest projections that industry and government leaders have set.
“Is there enough cooking oil to satisfy that?” said Michael Wolcott, who directs Washington State University’s Aviation Sustainability Center. “Based on our assessment in the United States, there is none and a large majority is already used in something else like biodiesel.”
“So more will have to be grown or it will have to come from somewhere else,” Wolcott said.
“We produce a lot of waste”
At DFW International Airport, employees can watch American Airlines jets through a small window in the back of a McDonald’s restaurant while dipping fries and chicken nuggets into hot oil that could one day power some of these planes.
The airport fast food restaurant is one of approximately 200 airport restaurants that have partnered with sustainable aviation fuel producer Neste, a Finnish company, to pump out cooking oil every few days .
“How you move the oil from the kitchen to the recycling tank somewhere else at the airport had to be systematically worked out,” said McWilliams, who manages three McDonald’s restaurants at the airport. “You had to have the right kind of fitting on your fryer for a quick disconnect so the oil could get into the reservoir, and then you move that oil safely because it’s still hot.”
The process of moving oil from fryers to a storage tank outside makes the coordination needed between dozens of companies to take used cooking oil and turn it into jet fuel a breeze.
DFW Airport is among dozens of government organizations and businesses pledging to be carbon neutral by 2030, using its own on-site power plant, committing to renewable energy and installing auto-dimming windows to reduce sunlight on sunny days. But recycling and an efficient HVAC can’t do much when your biggest customer, American Airlines, is a huge fuel guzzler that flies up to 800 jets a day, all using fossil fuels.
DFW International Airport is also the busiest airport in America and a hub for short and long-haul travel.
This has made DFW Airport a target for Neste, a Finnish company that is the world’s largest producer of sustainable aviation fuel. American Airlines and Neste signed a sustainable aviation fuel agreement in 2018, the first of three agreements signed by American Airlines promising to take more than 130 gallons of fuel, although it did not specify exactly when or for How.
In total, stores and restaurants at DFW Airport’s five terminals produce about 32,000 pounds of used cooking oil per month for Neste to turn into sustainable aviation fuel, said Robert Horton, vice president of airport environmental affairs.
“We generate a lot of waste, a lot of unwanted product that has to go somewhere,” Horton said.
But even though DFW airport pumps millions of gallons of regular jet fuel per year, the actual amount of sustainable aviation fuel was limited to delivering 8,000 gallons of fuel last year to corporate customers.
American, one of Neste’s largest customers in the United States, is refueling some of its aircraft with sustainable aviation fuel at San Francisco International Airport due to the ease of getting fuel to San Francisco Bay Airport.
“We have a pretty good line of sight”
The commitment to purchase nearly 4 billion gallons of sustainable aviation fuel by U.S. airlines should give global producers plenty to do in the years to come, especially in the years between now and 2030, when the US Department of Energy has set a goal of 3 billion gallons of fuel to be produced. A decade later, airlines and the Biden administration hope to incentivize producers to manufacture up to 30 to 35 billion gallons by 2050, which would be enough to supply every commercial airline in the world based on the demand projections.
For now, reaching these levels will not come cheap. A gallon of sustainable aviation fuel costs around $6-7 a gallon for those with major commitments. Jet fuel costs less than half that, even when it was selling for more than $3 a gallon in March, the highest price paid by airlines since 2014, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
For years, airlines will likely lose millions on sustainable aviation fuel.
“In 2020, American Airlines used nearly 2.3 billion gallons of jet fuel in our operations, so even a small purchase premium (sustainable fuel) has a big impact on our profitability,” American Airlines said in a statement. questionnaire on climate change as part of its environmental project.
Even if the price differential were to drop to 50 cents a gallon and American mixed regular jet fuel in equal parts with sustainable aviation fuel, it would still cost the company about $574 million a year based on consumption levels of 2020, which was the lowest fuel. consumption levels for decades due to the travel slowdown related to COVID-19.
Committing to buy billions of gallons of sustainable aviation fuel aims to incentivize producers, such as Neste and California-based World Energy, to keep making it, build new refineries and cut costs, said Steve Csonka, Executive Director of Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels. Initiative, a research group supported by most major airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration.
“We have a pretty good line of sight to 800 million gallons of production in 2027,” Csonka said. “You could say there’s a pretty big gap between 800 million and 3 billion, but there are about 40 new entrants coming into space.”
That number would likely be pushed even higher if Congress passed tax credits that would give up to $1.25 for every gallon of fuel. This proposal is part of Biden’s Build Back Better bill under consideration on Capitol Hill.
Csonka likes to remind people that it took decades after the development of diesel engines to create an affordable and viable production and distribution network in the United States and around the world. And since then, oil producers and refiners have only become more efficient, further reducing costs for consumers and profits for oil companies.
Sustainable aviation fuel prices will come down if research and infrastructure expand, Csonka said.
“You have to look at what’s going to happen to the price of oil over this period, the next 20 to 30 years,” Csonka said. “Is it expected to rise naturally or because of carbon taxes? I think so, and that could be a big plus for sustainable aviation fuel.