Brussels Talks on Sustainable Aviation Fuel Targets Set to Restart

by Helen Massy-Beresford (Aviation Week) ... Late last year, trialog talks—among the European Commission, European Parliament and European Council—resulted in agreement on revisions to the emissions trading system for aviation as part of the broader emissions-cutting Fit for 55 legislation package. However, discussions of ReFuelEU, the eagerly awaited legislation that would cover the region’s sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) mandates, ended without agreement.

All of that took place during the previous EU presidency of the Czech Republic. Sweden, which has held the presidency since the new year began, is expected to want to resolve the ongoing question of ReFuelEU as quickly as possible.

The trialog talks should start in the next few weeks, although a European Commission source says no exact date has been fixed.

Meanwhile, the proposed targets remain just that. Under the Fit for 55 legislation, the required percentage of SAF is set at 2% in 2025, 5% in 2030, 20% in 2035, 32% in 2040, 38% in 2045 and 63% in 2050. Within that, the proposed submandate for synthetic or e-fuels is 0.7% in 2030, 5% in 2035, 8% in 2040, 11% in 2045 and 28% in 2050. Legislators had discussed increasing the subtarget for synthetic fuels to 1% in 2030, 2% in 2033 and 5% in 2035.

Diverging views that stopped the parties from reaching agreement at the previous trialog talks will need to be ironed out. One important question is whether synthetic fuels generated using nuclear energy should be included. The talks also touched on increasing the subtargets at the national level.

Neste plans major investments to increase capacity and help it produce 1.5 million metric tons of SAF by year-end, up from around 100,000 metric tons in 2022 at its Porvoo refinery in Finland.

According to International Air Transport Association (IATA) calculations, at least 300 million liters (79 million gal.) of SAF were produced in 2022—triple the 2021 output—although more optimistic calculations put last year’s total production at as much as 450 million liters.

SAF is set to account for about 65% of CO₂ abatement in the industry through 2050—and for that to happen, 450 billion liters of SAF would be needed, according to IATA.

Coming to an agreement on the ReFuelEU mandates would be an important first step in providing visibility and encouraging producers to invest in SAF facilities, but the industry contends that more needs to be done, mirroring incentives to boost production in the U.S. market. READ MORE

Excerpt from Biofuels International: The feedstocks producing the fuel with the highest emission savings according to the currently revised Renewable Energy Directive (RED II) are waste lipids and especially used cooking oil (UCO) with 90% GHG savings compared to fossil fuels.
Collecting a waste that has already fulfilled its original purpose use, and then reusing it again for clean energy production, should be considered a perfect example of a circular economy where nothing is wasted.

However, there is a big disadvantage for UCO – we do not have enough of it. The existing EU UCO collection is close to 1 million tons, but the joint demand for the road transport, maritime and aviation emanating from the respective legislative proposals could easily exceed this number by more than eight-fold.
Domestic collection has stalled since it is extremely difficult to tap into volumes available at the household level.
In addition, UCO imports have started a downwards trend and have limitations of their own, including increasing energy mandates and huge projected production capacity in countries of origin.
Across Europe, UCO shortages are already tangible and this should already be a major red flag for legislators when drafting up the strategy for transport decarbonisation for the next decades.

According to the ReFuelEU Aviation there is no limitation for the use of UCO, even if the technology using UCO for aviation fuel (HEFA) is less efficient – from 1,000 kg of UCO you can get just 610 kg of HEFA with GHG emissions 24g CO2eq/MJ (= 76% GHG savings compared to fossil fuels).
As this is currently the only commercially available technology at scale for sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), and with significant volumes needed to fulfil the SAF mandate, it is expected that with no safeguards all UCO will be consumed in aviation.

UCO processed for road transport or maritime is significantly more efficient, you can get 1004 kg of UCO-based biodiesel UCOME from 1000 kg of UCO and with GHG emissions 10g CO2eq/MJ (= 90% savings compared to fossil fuels).

A 2% aviation blending mandate in 2025 would require up to 1.5 million tons of waste lipids diverted from waste-based biodiesel production from the road and maritime sectors.
Additionally, the difference in emission profiles of aviation fuel HEFA compared to UCOME for road and maritime transport will result in a minimum of 1 million tons of additional GHG emissions released to the atmosphere per year from 2025.
This amount is only set to increase in parallel to the upwards trajectory of the blending mandate.

Is there a logic in this approach? This strategy definitely does not go hand in hand with the EU’s goal to reduce emissions fast and at the lowest possible cost.

The aviation mandate should rely on new emerging technologies, which could provide those additional volumes of aviation fuels needed in the future, such as e-fuels, alcohol-to-jet, Fischer Tropsch.
However these novel technologies suffer from lack of support as the EU has created an aviation proposal with overreliance on UCO based HEFA.
In addition to that, other important measures should be maintained in the final text of the Regulation, most notably a broadening of the feedstock base of the SAF definition to include other non-Annex IX sustainable feedstocks such as category 3 animal fats, and potentially crop-based feedstocks in accordance to REDII sustainability criteria.

Let us look back to the original purpose of the Green Deal and focus on ambitious and achievable climate neutrality; now is the time to set proper and functional rules in order to reduce GHG emissions for real.