The search for alternatives to fossil fuels to promote emissions-free mobility and end dependence on non-renewable resources is one of the greatest challenges facing the transport sector. The transition towards cleaner and more sustainable technologies is applicable not only to land mobility, which is what we all know most first-hand, but also to air and maritime mobility.
In the field of aeronautics, hydrogen is already being experimented with as a promising alternative to reduce emissions in aviation. This transition to cleaner fuels is essential to mitigate the environmental impact of flying, an industry that has historically relied on fossil fuels and accounts for 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
An example of this effort to transform the passenger air transport sector is the recent milestone achieved by a plane from the British company Virgin Atlantic, which flew from London to New York using exclusively sustainable fuel. This source of energy is known as SAF (Sustainable Aviation Fuel) and is obtained from waste such as used cooking oil or waste from agriculture and livestock.
The plane used for this historic journey was a Boeing 787 equipped with Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines. On board this aircraft were prominent personalities, including the founder of Virgin, the British business magnate Richard Branson, along with government representatives. from the United Kingdom and the United States. A prominent group of engineers also traveled on the plane.
This significant flight not only marks considerable progress towards more sustainable aviation, but also symbolizes collaboration between the public and private sectors in the search for environmental solutions. In this regard, the United States Department of Energy highlighted the importance of the event. “It's a big step toward making air travel greener, but we still face numerous challenges in making the fuel widely available.”
During flight, SAF is burned like conventional aircraft fuel, generating a similar amount of emissions. However, its carbon footprint is lower, as it is usually produced from plants that previously absorbed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
However, the Aviation Environment Federation expressed skepticism at the aviation industry's claims about the real impact of sustainable fuel on carbon emissions.
The agency's policy director, Cait Hewitt, dismissed the notion that this flight marks significant progress toward environmentally friendly aviation. According to Hewitt, SAF fuel currently represents “around 0.1% of aviation fuel globally and it will be very difficult to increase this sustainably.”
Currently, commercial aircraft engines in operation do not have the necessary approval to operate exclusively on SAF fuel. Situations such as the one experienced by Virgin Atlantic are part of scientific research that seeks to prepare the ground for a broader future implementation of this type of fuel.
While this is the first passenger aircraft to make a transatlantic journey using only sustainable fuel, it was not a commercial flight nor the first to do so. Gulfstream Aerospace was the first to fly over the Atlantic in early November with one of its business jets.
Additionally, Air France-KLM aircraft powered by SAF fuel flew two years ago from Paris to Montreal using a mixture of petroleum-based jet fuel and a synthetic derived from recycled cooking oils.
Obtaining discarded oils and fats is not so easy, at least without the prices to obtain these products skyrocketing, so in the short or medium term there is no widespread implementation of sustainable fuels in air transport. Now, according to Caroline Midgley, director of biofuels and chemicals research at GlobalData, most airlines are looking to replace 10% of their fossil kerosene with SAF fuels by 2030.
For its part, IATA (International Air Transport Association) expects that by 2050 this type of biofuel will represent 65% of the total used by commercial aviation.
