Saturday, June 17, 2023

Green wings: Inside airlines’ quest to become more environment-friendly

These lines from the iconic British rock band Pink Floyd’s 1987 hit are emblematic of aviation. For, it’s trying and trying again that has enabled humankind to fulfil its dream to fly. And amid warnings of a changing climate, there is a growing aspiration to make flying sustainable. But since caring for the environment demands a massive overhaul of existing technologies as well as copious expenditure, it’s not going to be easy. So, when Air India’s low-cost subsidiary AirAsia India successfully operated the country’s first commercial flight on the Pune-Delhi sectors using an indigenously produced sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) blend on the morning of May 19, the world’s fastest-growing aviation market achieved yet another milestone on its flight towards sustainability.

“SAF’s efficacy as an aviation fuel has already been proven across the world. Within the country, we have put in place some thoughts in terms of what that mix should be and we’re looking at blending 1 per cent of SAF by 2025, 2 per cent by 2028, and 5 per cent by 2030 in regular aviation turbine fuel (ATF),” Jyotiraditya Scindia, Minister of Civil Aviation, tells Business Today.

For the past several months, Scindia’s ministry has been coordinating with the Ministry of Petroleum and Nat­ural Gas on guidelines for promoting SAF by getting Ind­ian carriers to use it with ATF. “By 2025, if we ta­r­get bl­ending 1 per cent SAF in jet fuel, India would req­uire ar­ound 140 million litres of SAF per annum. More am­bi­tiously, if we target for 5 per cent SAF blend, India re­quires around 700 million litres of SAF per annum,” says Hardeep Singh Puri, Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas.

17/05/2023 Manish Pant/Nidhi Singal/Business Today

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