36 | Flight International | 28 January-3 February 2020 flightglobal.com
ENVIRONMENT
❯❯ Shell and renewable fuels company
V elocys to develop a plant in Lincolnshire
that would turn household and commercial
waste into sustainable jet fuel. The airline
says it will purchase jet fuel produced at the
proposed plant for use in its aircraft.
Meanwhile, Shell Aviation announced
last November that it will support SkyNRG
in developing what it describes as “Europe’s
first dedicated sustainable aviation fuel pro-
duction plant”.
The plant, known as DSL-01, will be
located in Delfzijl in the Netherlands and is
expected to open in 2022. It will produce
100,000t of fuel per year, derived from used
cooking oil sourced predominantly from re-
gional industries. The fuel’s life-cycle carbon
emissions will be 85% lower than conven-
tional jet fuel, say the two companies.
Shell Aviation vice-president Anna
Mascolo says the project is a “crucial mile-
stone in accelerating the supply of sustainable
aviation fuels in Europe”.
“When it comes to carbon emissions, the
aviation industry needs collaboration among
industry players, it needs support to drive
technical innovation and investments, and,
last but not least, it needs a multiple set of
solutions that help drive a faster transition to
a net zero emissions world.”
Speaking at the conference, Bryan
Stonehouse, global aviation biofuels and
carbon manager at Shell Aviation, acknowl-
edged that sustainable fuels represent “less
than 0.1%” of the global jet fuel market, but
said that “we’re starting to hit a tipping
point”. In 2020, supply will be 10 times great-
er than it was in 2019, he adds.British Airways has teamed up with
Shell and Velocys to develop a plant
that would turn household and
commercial waste into jet fuelIndustry wants UK government to set up
an Office for Sustainable Aviation FuelsShutterstockShutterstockEchoing Mascolo’s call for more collabora-
tion, Adam Morton, head of environmental
technology at Rolls-Royce, believes that barri-
ers between different technologies must be
broken down to help reduce the aviation
industry’s carbon footprint: “The sooner we
break down the silos, the sooner we start to
make rapid progress towards net zero.
“It is not always possible to know how far
and how fast to go, but we have seen huge
changes in the past months and we may have
to go faster,” admits Morton.SMALL VOLUME
While sustainable aviation fuels “can deliver
relatively large life-cycle benefits”, he adds,
“they are not commercially competitive in
terms of price and they are produced in rela-
tively small volumes”.
Morton believes that aviation “needs pref-
erential access to feedstocks”, but it is “un-
likely that biomass alone would produce the
feedstocks needed for the volumes” required
to power the world fleet. Pointing to the 50%
blend limit on alternative jet fuel, Morton
says: “As we move to net zero, we need to
move to higher blends.”
The urgency of the climate crisis and
growing consumer awareness around the im-
pact of aviation seem to have taken the indus-
try by surprise. For instance, R-R had thought
“it would be necessary to decarbonise avia-
tion at some point in the second half of this
century”, says Morton.
But the engine manufacturer changed its
view after the UN Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change published its landmark
report in 2018, which warned of dire conse-
quences if global warming were to exceed
1.5°C (2.7°F). Adds Morton: “There is no
silver bullet. We will have to pull all the le-
vers extremely hard.” ■