A green recovery for aviation - continuing the debate

Thanks for the interest and responses to the post. Sorry my response has not been instantaneous - it’s been a pretty unprecedented six months for the sector and for Heathrow so lots of juggling of competing priorities at the moment ?? The reason for putting the post up was to set out a route to net-zero for aviation and start a dialogue on it so I’m glad it has. This is a quick “omnibus” response to the main points I’ve heard. I’m not sure a quick reply will do justice to some of this so I’ll likely do a longer post after my August break and as I trail below there will be more reports and evidence being published in future too.

My personal starting point is that aviation is a force for good and our challenge therefore is to protect its benefits in a world without carbon. That’s a different philosophical starting point from one of the respondents to the post on Heathrow’s LinkedIn account which argued the sector should be halved in size to cut its emissions. If we can thrive and grow as a sector AND get to net zero, my strongly held belief is that that must be the right social welfare answer, so that’s where I’m focusing my time and where I’m using Heathrow’s scale and influence to drive change. If you want to advocate adding to the UK economy’s, and aviation sector’s, huge current challenges by further decimating employment, you’re welcome to have that debate but I won’t be the best person to have it with.

The good news from all my conversations with experts in this space is that growth and decarbonisation can be achieved. In the mid- to long-term the two most likely pathways are: 1) the mass production of hydrocarbon electrofuel or synfuel as a switch-in fuel for conventional aircraft, and; 2) the development of a new zero-emissions aircraft powered by a combination of hydrogen and battery (most likely for shorter journeys). While we research and develop those pathways, we can accelerate cuts in carbon from now by scaling up Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) in the form of second-generation biofuels. All of those steps will require implementation of a number of transformative technologies. But human history is a story of technological breakthroughs that have transformed society. It’s only just over a century since the first powered flight. When that happened, the idea of a person on the moon would have seemed the stuff of fantasy. Personally, I’m backing human ingenuity on this one. But I’m not backing it in a flush of na?ve optimism – I’m backing it through urgent and purposeful action by Governments, businesses and experts around the world, in the form of massive investment in R&D and the right policy framework to accelerate technological development and deployment. That’s why I welcome the UK Government’s ambition of transatlantic flight without harm to the environment within a generation and the Jet Zero Council as a mechanism to accelerate that journey.

On the specific points on fuels:

• First, life-cycle assessments or "LCAs". SAF burnt in engines produces CO2, as kerosene does. So the carbon savings come elsewhere in the production life-cycle – waste diverted from landfill with consequent savings methane emissions, for example, or industrial emissions recycled rather than going to the atmosphere. These LCAs are based on the approaches and standards used by Governments and experts around the world. They’re used by the UK’s Committee on Climate Change (CCC) too. I don’t hear many in the UK arguing that the CCC isn’t a robust, evidence-based independent advisor. Clearly these LCAs need to be robust and should be regularly reviewed to reflect the context of a progressively de-carbonising economy.
• Sustainable Aviation’s Fuels Roadmap is a detailed, bottom-up study by independent experts E4Tech on scaling up SAF – the production pathways, plants required, and Government policy needed. That informed the 8% SAF figure for the UK by 2035. I can’t speak to the Dutch sector’s target.
• Feedstocks for SAF will vary by geography. The sector is clear SAF must meet strict sustainability standards and avoid the clear problems of first-generation bio-fuels. In the UK, the focus is on second-generation bio-fuels from waste – including municipal waste and recycled industrial gases for example.
• Is there enough supply of sustainable biomass globally for aviation? The ETC’s “Mission Possible” report on aviation concluded that there is and they’re in the midst of a further much more detailed study here which will be published as part of their work. They do conclude that aviation would need to be prioritised. This isn’t about “favouring” one sector. The enemy is carbon and our collective challenge is to get carbon out of the global economy as quickly as possible. If other sectors have cheaper and easier alternatives to de-carbonising that don’t involve biomass – which seems likely in most cases – then it’s a logical policy response to prioritise aviation.
• But it’s worth remembering too, to my earlier point on the mid- to long-term pathways, that SAF isn’t just about bio-fuels. As the ETC also set out, synthetic fuels, from a combination of renewably produced hydrogen and captured carbon, could make a fully “climate neutral” fuel. We need the cost of renewables to continue to fall. We need carbon capture technology at scale. The UK is focused on both of those things. At Heathrow we’re playing our role supporting an Imperial College proposal to trial a direct air capture unit in the relatively CO2 rich environment of the airport. We’re not going to solve this alone as the airport, but one of the things we can do is use our infrastructure as a test-bed as well as advocating the right Government policies pursued with urgency and purpose.
• In the meantime, we need to look at whether we can go further and faster in scaling up second-gen bio--fuels and detailed work by the ETC looking at production across Europe as a whole suggests that may well be possible. That work will be published in the autumn and the EU’s developing its policy proposals so this debate will continue. As a sector, we’ll continue to be scrutinised for the plans we put forward and when we write pieces like the one I did. That’s right – I’d be worried if that didn’t happen. We need to base our arguments on clear, transparent evidence so that we can be held to account. That’s what the UK’s Sustainable Aviation coalition did when it published a detailed 80 page pathway to net zero alongside its fuels roadmap. That’s what the WEF/ETC “Clean Skies for Tomorrow” group will be doing with its work too.