With sustainable aviation fuel, is a new era of green air travel possible by 2025?

Neville Har­greaves is work­ing at tech­no­logy firm Velo­cys on turn­ing every­day waste into jet fuel at a com­mer­cial scale. In this “Good Tour­ism” Insight, Dr Har­greaves explains why he thinks sus­tain­able avi­ation fuel is the only real­ist­ic near-term solu­tion to air travel’s cli­mate quandary.

The ongo­ing impact of COVID-19 has been debil­it­at­ing, but it has also forced the glob­al com­munity to pause and con­sider how our actions impact the world around us. There is con­sensus that we must use this hugely dis­rupt­ive peri­od to ensure a green­er restart. Avi­ation has a crit­ic­ally import­ant role to play in the recov­ery; re-estab­lish­ing trade, recon­nect­ing com­munit­ies, and kick­start­ing tour­ism. But we must ensure that travel resumes in as green a way as possible.

Sus­tain­able avi­ation fuel (SAF) is the only way to achieve mean­ing­ful decar­bon­isa­tion of avi­ation in the near term. Whilst some point to bat­tery power, the energy dens­ity and per­form­ance of the tech­no­logy can­not match liquid hydro­car­bon fuel. Hydro­gen has per­haps more prom­ise, but is sim­il­arly low in volu­met­ric dens­ity. Both require sub­stan­tial air­craft redesign. Com­par­at­ively, SAF can decar­bon­ise avi­ation imme­di­ately using exist­ing planes and as such offers the only real­ist­ic pro­spect of redu­cing net green­house gas emis­sions to zero for a long-haul flight.

In the UK, Velo­cys is work­ing with major indus­tri­al part­ners to devel­op UK’s first com­mer­cial-scale waste-to-jet-fuel plant: Altalto. The plant will take hun­dreds of thou­sands of tonnes per year of every­day house­hold and com­mer­cial resid­ual waste, from nap­pies to cof­fee cups, that would oth­er­wise be destined for land­fill or incineration. 

Velo­cys’ waste-to-jet-fuel process:

The waste-to-jet-fuel pro­cess will com­ple­ment exist­ing UK recyc­ling prac­tices, tak­ing from parts of the waste stream which are un-recyc­lable and turn­ing them into SAF. This offers net green­house gas sav­ings of around 70% for each tonne of con­ven­tion­al jet fuel it dis­places. When com­pleted in 2025 (sub­ject to fin­an­cing), Altalto will pro­duce enough SAF for more than 1,000 flights from Lon­don to New York each year.

Whilst it is true that a com­munity is unlikely to gen­er­ate enough waste to power all the flights it wants to take, it can make a size­able con­tri­bu­tion. Com­bined with agri­cul­tur­al and forestry wastes which would oth­er­wise decom­pose on the ground, there is enough feed­stock in the world to meet glob­al avi­ation needs.

Our Bay­ou Fuels facil­ity in the US will take waste from the Mis­sis­sippi paper and lum­ber indus­tries; woody residue that would oth­er­wise rot on the forest floor. The sus­tain­ab­il­ity of this sup­ply chain has been pro­vi­sion­ally veri­fied by the Roundtable for Sus­tain­able Bio­ma­ter­i­als. Our prac­tices in gath­er­ing feed­stock ensures that, for example, enough residue is left on the forest floor to sus­tain future growth. 

Like Altalto, the fuel pro­duced at Bay­ou will deliv­er a net CO₂ sav­ing of around 70% for each tonne of con­ven­tion­al fuel it dis­places. But with car­bon cap­ture tech­no­logy we will be able to take the envir­on­ment­al bene­fits accrued a step fur­ther, enabling the pro­duc­tion of net neg­at­ive car­bon intens­ity fuels.

With Velo­cys’ tech­no­logy, the world’s first zero-emis­sion plane could be one that is already in the sky today. We don’t need to design and build a brand-new air­craft to reach net zero. Instead, our tech­no­logy, when coupled with car­bon cap­ture, could enable the pro­duc­tion of neg­at­ive emis­sion fuels which could be used in exist­ing air­craft, requir­ing no modi­fic­a­tions to engines at all. Solu­tions like this are urgently needed if we’re to return to the skies post-COV­ID and cut aviation’s car­bon foot­print to meet nation­al and inter­na­tion­al cli­mate change targets.

What do you think? Do you agree or dis­agree? Do you dis­pute a claim made here? Or do you have a ques­tion? Share a short com­ment or anec­dote below. Or write a deep­er “GT” Insight. The “Good Tour­ism” Blog wel­comes diversity of opin­ion and per­spect­ive about travel & tour­ism because travel & tour­ism is everyone’s business.

Fea­tured image (top of post): By 12659751 (CC0) via Pixabay.

About the author

Neville Har­greaves has more than 30 years’ exper­i­ence in the fuels, energy, and con­sult­ing indus­tries. He joined Velo­cys in 2011 in a busi­ness devel­op­ment role. Now, as Vice Pres­id­ent of Waste to Fuel, Neville is respons­ible for the com­mer­cial, fin­an­cial, and cor­por­ate devel­op­ment of Velo­cys’ Altalto waste-to-jet-fuel pro­ject in the UK, and for UK gov­ern­ment rela­tions and communications. 

Neville has held a wide range of tech­nic­al and com­mer­cial roles over 12 years at Exxon and four years with strategy con­sult­ing firm Bain & Com­pany. With a MA in chem­istry from Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity and a PhD from Uni­ver­sity Col­lege Lon­don, Dr Har­greaves is a Fel­low of the Roy­al Soci­ety of Chemistry.