Europe Regulates Sustainable Fuel Use

Airlines in Europe have faced increasing regulatory pressure to reduce emissions, with the EU reaching an agreement on a mandate for sustainable aviation fuel use and France formally banning some short-haul domestic flights.

The European Parliament and the Council, which represents the 27 member states, agreed to a deal on the ReFuelEU Aviation mandate on April 25. The SAF policy, which will require airlines to increase their use of sustainable fuels for flights departing from EU airports, is now set to be implemented from 2025. It will start at a minimum 2 percent share of SAF and then rise to 6 percent in 2030, with the ultimate target of reaching 70 percent SAF by 2050.

It is the final transport element of the EU’s Fit for 55 package, which is designed to turn climate goals into law, including the commitment to cut emissions by at least 55 percent by 2030. SAF can reduce carbon emissions associated with the fuel lifecycle (including fuel production) by up to 80 percent compared with traditional kerosene jet fuel. The policy forms part of the European Green Deal initiative to make the continent carbon neutral by 2050.

“This political agreement is a turning point for European aviation, putting it on a solid pathway towards decarbonization,” according to EU commissioner for Transport Adina Valean. “Shifting to sustainable aviation fuels will improve our energy security, while reducing reliance on fossil fuel imports.”

As well as introducing the SAF mandate, airlines operating from EU airports will only be able to take on the fuel required for the next flight, rather than carrying excess fuel to avoid having to take on SAF-blended fuel. This over-fueling practice is known as “tinkering” and creates extra weight and carbon “leakage.” Airports will also be required to ensure their fueling infrastructure is “fit for SAF distribution.”

Sustainability group Travel & Environment said the approval of the EU’s SAF mandate would “kickstart Europe’s green aviation fuel market” with T&E aviation manager Matteo Mirolo calling it “an unwavering endorsement of the world’s largest green fuel mandate for aviation.” He noted it “will require industrial support policies for synthetic kerosene but also stronger safeguards to ensure that no unsustainable biofuels creep into airplane tanks.”

Airline Industry Pushes Back

The airline industry has pushed back on the requirement. At the International Air Transport Association’s annual meeting, held in Istanbul in early June, the group’s head, Willie Walsh, said it was an indication of “the EU as being anti-aviation, whereas other parts of the world are very positive, pro-aviation,” according to Reuters. Instead of mandates, IATA has called on governments to “act to ensure that SAF gets its fair production share,” which includes production incentives and diversifying methods and feedstocks available for SAF production, according to Walsh.

“With these two measures successfully in place, we can be confident that the expected 2028 production levels will be realistically aligned with our recently published roadmaps to net zero carbon emissions by 2050,” Walsh said in a statement. “That is important as we are counting on SAF to provide about 62 percent of the carbon mitigation needed in 2050.”

Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr, meanwhile, said that European airlines may be forced to increase fares and risk losing traffic to non-EU carriers because of the SAF mandate. He said that while the approach was right “in principle,” European airlines could lose out because the EU’s regulations were not “competition neutral.”

“Currently, the mandatory blending quotas only apply within Europe, including feeder flights to our hubs,” Spohr said in a speech prepared for the carrier’s annual general meeting in May. “Non-European airlines are not required to fill up with the sustainable—but expensive—fuel at their hubs. This will make tickets from European airlines more expensive because no airline can compensate for the additional cost.”

Those higher prices could drive passengers to other carriers and to connections outside of Europe, which would counteract the mandate’s intent and “only lead to a shift in carbon emissions,” not a reduction, he said.

Short-haul flights on routes with comparable train service also has been in the sightlines of regulators, and France in May formally introduced the first ban on some routes with alternative train journeys of less than two and a half hours. The French government announced the ban as part of its Climate Law in 2021, and the European Commission approved it last December.

Initially, the domestic flight ban will only apply to three routes from Paris Orly airport to Nantes, Lyon and Bordeaux, but could be extended to other routes if equivalent train services are improved. The EU has stipulated that the measure must be reviewed after three years in place.

The enforcement of the ban is largely symbolic at this point, as the three affected routes are not currently served by any airlines. Air France stopped flying those routes in 2020 as a stipulation for receiving financial support from the French government during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Connecting flights are not affected by the ban, so it does not apply to any services to the country’s main hub at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport.

METHODOLOGY

Business Travel News fielded the 2023 Sustainability Survey from May 18-30 on the SurveyMonkey platform. BTN via email solicited responses from subscribers to BTN, BTN Europe and BTN’s newsletters. A total of 200 qualified respondents answered the survey, 73 percent from North America, 24 percent from Europe, and 2 percent from elsewhere. Not every respondent answered every survey question. Not all figures add up to 100 due to rounding. The 2021 survey, hosted on SurveyMonkey, was fielded Feb. 23-Mar. 16, 2021, and returned 318 responses. The 2021 survey can be found in the Sustaining the Future issue at BTN’s website.