Page 35 - Flight International (January 2020)

ENVIRONMENT

British Airways has teamed up with
Shell and Velocys to develop a plant
that would turn household and
commercial waste into jet fuel

Shutterstock

❯❯ Shell and renewable fuels company Shell Aviation vice-president Anna Echoing Mascolo’s call for more collabora-
V elocys to develop a plant in Lincolnshire Mascolo says the project is a “crucial mile- tion, Adam Morton, head of environmental
that would turn household and commercial stone in accelerating the supply of sustainable technology at Rolls-Royce, believes that barri-
waste into sustainable jet fuel. The airline aviation fuels in Europe”. ers between different technologies must be
says it will purchase jet fuel produced at the “When it comes to carbon emissions, the broken down to help reduce the aviation
proposed plant for use in its aircraft. aviation industry needs collaboration among industry’s carbon footprint: “The sooner we
Meanwhile, Shell Aviation announced industry players, it needs support to drive break down the silos, the sooner we start to
last November that it will support SkyNRG technical innovation and investments, and, make rapid progress towards net zero.
in developing what it describes as “Europe’s last but not least, it needs a multiple set of “It is not always possible to know how far
first dedicated sustainable aviation fuel pro- solutions that help drive a faster transition to and how fast to go, but we have seen huge
duction plant”. a net zero emissions world.” changes in the past months and we may have
The plant, known as DSL-01, will be Speaking at the conference, Bryan to go faster,” admits Morton.
located in Delfzijl in the Netherlands and is Stonehouse, global aviation biofuels and
expected to open in 2022. It will produce carbon manager at Shell Aviation, acknowl- SMALL VOLUME
100,000t of fuel per year, derived from used edged that sustainable fuels represent “less While sustainable aviation fuels “can deliver
cooking oil sourced predominantly from re- than 0.1%” of the global jet fuel market, but relatively large life-cycle benefits”, he adds,
gional industries. The fuel’s life-cycle carbon said that “we’re starting to hit a tipping “they are not commercially competitive in
emissions will be 85% lower than conven- point”. In 2020, supply will be 10 times great- terms of price and they are produced in rela-
tional jet fuel, say the two companies. er than it was in 2019, he adds. tively small volumes”.
Morton believes that aviation “needs pref-
Industry wants UK government to set up erential access to feedstocks”, but it is “un-
an Office for Sustainable Aviation Fuels 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
Shutterstock 1.5°C (2.7°F). Adds Morton: “There is no
silver bullet. We will have to pull all the le-
vers extremely hard.” ■

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