UK Airlines warn that ‘net zero’ targets are slipping beyond reach
Two of Britain’s biggest airlines have warned that the Government’s ‘net zero’ targets are at risk of becoming unachievable
On September 7th, The Telegraph reported:
Virgin Atlantic and International Airlines Group (IAG), the parent company of British Airways, have raised concerns over a mandate for carriers to use at least 10pc of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) by 2030.
They said this is becoming increasingly challenging amid a shortage of production across the UK, where there is yet to be a single SAF plant built.
Holly Boyd-Boland, an executive at Virgin, said the point is fast approaching when it will no longer be possible to convincingly claim that net zero goals can be met.
She told a conference in London: “We’re at risk of a growing credibility gap for us as a sector in terms of where we set our ambition and what we actually deliver.
“From a consumer perspective and wider stakeholders, we’re getting close to an inflection point where we cannot demonstrate supply in the system and a reduction in emissions.”
Jonathon Counsell, of IAG, said global SAF production totalled 1m tonnes last year – which was “a drop in the ocean” compared to the 400m-500m tonnes required to deliver net zero emissions by 2050.
Full story here.
It was clear from the outset that ‘sustainable aviation fuel’ targets were little more than ‘green’ virtue signalling. There was never any sort of justification, economic or environmental, while the rest of the world is carrying on as normal.
It is a pity Virgin and the rest did not tell the truth in the first place.
Meanwhile Shell have cancelled plans to build a giant biofuel factory in the Netherlands because “SAF and biodiesel were too expensive and insufficiently competitive”:
Again from the Telegraph:
We would be a global force in “jet zero”, promised Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, five years ago. Britain would lead the way in creating “sustainable aviation”, with world-leading research on planes that could fly across the Atlantic without doing any harm to the environment.
Right across the Western world, leaders were making similar pledges, investing billions in new types of fuels and engines, while slapping punitive taxes on the old, dirty jets to make sure we switched to cleaner ones as quickly as possible.
The jet zero project is now in full-scale retreat, with companies pulling out of a market that doesn’t exist, and countries scaling back on aviation taxes. It isn’t going to happen – and we would be far better off cutting carbon emissions elsewhere while allowing the aviation industry to flourish.
It has been another bad week for the cheerleaders for sustainable flying. Shell decided that a huge new plant in the Netherlands that was designed to be one of Europe’s major converters of waste into sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and biodiesel was too expensive and insufficiently competitive.
The decision was, according to Ashley Kelty, an analyst at Panmure Liberium, “another nail in the ideological coffin for SAF and biofuels”. Airlines still face mandatory targets to use set quotas of green fuels, but it is hard to know where they will get them, given that even a company as large as Shell, with lots of world-class expertise at its disposal, does not seem to be able to work out how to make the stuff at a reasonable cost.
Meanwhile, a few countries are even giving up on aviation taxes. From July, anyone getting a plane out of Sweden will no longer have to pay a green levy on their ticket, after its government decided that the “flight-shaming” movement had done too much damage to the industry.
India and Germany have also reduced the taxes on air travel. With grim inevitability, Britain’s tax-obsessed Labour Government is still putting them up, with yet more rises in air passenger duty in the last Budget, but at least some countries are recognising they do more harm than good.
See more here notalotofpeopleknowthat
Header image: Joanna E
Please Donate Below To Support Our Ongoing Work To Defend The Scientific Method
PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company 
incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX.
Trackback from your site.
very old white guy
| #
Net zero was never achievable, ever.
Reply
Aaron
| #
No it wasn’t but someone made billions on the scam.
seems they have reached peak profit and the damage has been done
win fer them
another loss for us
left right dem/rep makes no difference
STOMP STOMP STOMP
when is enough enough
Reply