SAF Uptake Vital To Bizav Future, Panel Says

PORT ERIN, ISLE OF MAN–Business aviation has made significant steps toward increasing adoption of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), but concerted effort and broad-based collaboration is required if the sector is to maintain its social license to operate.

This is according to participants in a panel discussion held during the Isle of Man Aviation Conference (and moderated by the author).

Further, they suggest, SAF adoption—and the sector’s demonstrable sustainability improvements in general—are vital to recruitment and retention efforts.

“We need to sit down—as policymakers, technology providers, renewable energy providers, airlines, lessors, financiers and investors—to chart a risk map that’s for everyone,” says Ulrike Ziegler, president of the board of directors of Impact On Sustainable Aviation, a group that brings together aviation stakeholders and financiers to identify solutions and funding opportunities for aerospace decarbonization initiatives. “Because unless we do that, the deployment of SAF—which we know we’re already way behind in our plans and the volumes to deliver—someone else is going to take it off us.”

SAF is available in gradually increasing quantities, though it remains a very small proportion of jet fuel supplied globally, despite European and other mandates that will require massively increased production in the near term. The vast majority of SAF that comes to the marketplace is bought by the commercial airlines, while business aviation users, when offered SAF as an option, are still often put off by the considerable price differential.

One global operator suggests that a powerful mechanism to encourage business aviation uptake is to require customers to opt out of uplifting SAF, rather than inviting them to opt in.

“We’re not waiting for our customers to ask for it—we’re giving it to them, and telling them,” says Andrew Thomas, director of sustainability at Vista, which expects to upload 4 million U.S. gal. of blended SAF (appx. 1.1 million gal. neat) in 2024. “They’re more than [welcome] to opt out, but 90% of the customers are opting in, which is great. I think that’s the key: having it part of your daily operations, not waiting for each corporate to ask for it and want it.

They’re not experts—we don’t expect them to be. We’re the experts.”

With SAF availability a significant issue for the foreseeable future, the book-and-claim mechanism is likely to prove pivotally important. This enables a customer to pay for SAF at a location where it is not available, with a corresponding volume of SAF uploaded to another aircraft at an airfield which has secured a supply. But in Europe, there is as yet no agreement about whether carbon credits can be considered equal across different European nations. The European Business Aviation Association (EBAA) is actively lobbying on this.

“There are a lot of different advantages to book-and-claim,” says Maureen Gautier, EBAA’s sustainability and workforce manager. “If you’re in Ibiza and you want SAF, there are no production facilities in Ibiza, so you’re presumably going to get SAF that’s coming from northern Europe—which means that you need to ship it all the way to Ibiza to upload it on the aircraft, and that takes away all the environmental benefit of using SAF.”

Thomas notes that, among Vista’s corporate clients, book-and-claim is often their first exposure to buying SAF. Inventive marketing of it to customers can encourage later, greater utilization of the fuel.

“The first engagement is just using a small amount,” he says.
“Rather than talking about gallons or liters, we’re saying: ‘How much would you like to reduce your emissions by, using book-and-claim? Is it 1%, 2%, 10%, 100%?’ At least getting them on that journey then helps them have buy-back internally, and they can scale up their purchase as well.”

Sustainability is also playing a role in sector-wide recruitment efforts. While some new entrants look forward to being part of solving aerospace’s difficult and significant environmental challenges, other experiences point in a less positive direction.

“I personally think that young people are moving away from aviation, and especially business aviation, due to the sustainability topic,” Gautier says. “I’m a good example of that. I used to work as a business-aviation lawyer, then I decided to leave the industry because it just didn’t work with my values. The only reason I decided to come back was because I wanted to work in sustainability. Most of my friends that I made in the industry when I started—especially the women—they’re all gone. One of the reasons, I’m convinced, is because of sustainability, and the image of the industry.”

Business aviation can remedy this situation, but doing so may require significant changes to corporate mindsets and communication policies, the panelists suggest.

“It comes back to showing our expertise [and] being outspoken about what we do,” Ziegler says. She cites one European low-cost airline who often speaks of itself as “the greenest airline” when highlighting its fuel-efficiency metrics.

“That doesn’t mean you’re decarbonizing,” she continues. “In commercial aviation, we want to double the fleet in the coming 20 years—so even with the introduction of new, more efficient aircraft, or the introduction of SAF to a certain level, that’s going to be over-compensated by the growth of our business. We need to address this one, and don’t call ourselves super-green—we’re not ... [and] really get the message out that we’re decoupling our still current growth in CO2 from the growth in traffic.”

Thomas adds that “It’s important to be factual, not boastful, in the messaging, because it’s going to hurt you for the future.”

Sustainability and the future workforce go together, Gautier says.

“The more sustainable we are, the more we’re going to attract people. I’m convinced of that.”