Greta Thunberg’s “Flygskam” or what amassed in popular culture as the “flight shame” roseas one iconic initiative all through Europe, shaking global consciousness on how essentially the aviation industry and as well individuals who take these commercial flights connivance to climate change. With the growing focus on the issue, activists and environmental groups are throwing the topic of ‘carbon footprints’ in the spotlight, as one big impact of commercial flights, contributions to as much as 2-3 % in the total carbon emission into the environment. Notable market analyst Deepak Talwar marks, “Up against the fashion industry accounting to 8% of emissions in carbon and the food industry at 25%, though the convictions on aviation industry have been arguably a little premature, the industry has taken the bests from the circumstances- embarking a positive consciousness to reduce the environmental impacts of flying. “
As opposed to the impossible ordeal of bringing down the flight numbers in this crucial global transport linkage, aviation sector players today join the march to help prevent climate change by smartly focusing of substantial and sustainable targets. This momentum soon reached India too, as the leading industry players are growing keen on options of Sustainable Aviation Fuels as one subject of interest. The resolve finds strength as Indian IndiGo Airlines have responded with a bold resort this year- declaring their tie to a global SAF provider with the first memorandum of understanding (MoU) to explore potentials in using SAFs in their aircrafts.
Sustainable Aviation Fuels are essentially jet fuels derived from sustainable feedstock like cooking oil, other non-palm waste, oils from plants and animals, solid waste like packaging, paper, textiles, and food scraps, forestry waste like waste wood, and energy crops, including fast growing plants and algae. With a variety more procurement sources, SAFs enjoy the edge over traditional jet fuels for having much low impacts on the environment while maintaining the same chemical composition and using the same infrastructural design.
The fuel also gives great benefits of easy functionality- being fit for use in different types of aircraft from small private jets to larger passenger planes. “It can be used straight in existing infrastructure and aircrafts by blending it at up to 50% with traditional jet fuels as per all quality tests. Its practicality sits high- for companies to put it to use, the fuel demands no colossal changes and can be handled in the same way as a traditional jet fuel.” Deepak Talwar explains further.
Answering the most important question of “Are SAFs going to be the aviation sector’s key tool to contribute to environmental conservation”, Deepak Talwar brings light to facts- “SAFs have been analysed to project potentials of as much as 80% reduction in carbon emissions in the entire lifecycle, when compared to traditional fuels.” This says a lot about the future with SAFs. To explain with a very small example- On one hand, a return flight between London and San Francisco creates a per economy ticket carbon footprint of nearly 1 tonne of CO2e with traditional fuels. On the other hand, the industry expects to double to over 8 billion passengers by the next 3 decades. This makes today a very crucial time to start weaving efforts to save the globe. There are quite numbered tools for carbon reduction that aviation can rely on- including aircraft designs, smarter operations and the development of technologies like electrification. However, SAFs can play a very crucial role because of the single-handed impact numbers it estimates.
12/08/21 Deccan Herald
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