Decarbonising long-haul flights by 2050

While electric and hydrogen aircraft are progressing as solutions for short-haul travel, they remain unviable for long-haul operations.

Utilising our new FlyingGreen platform’s FuellingDecarb module, we estimate the feasibility of producing sufficient sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) to meet ReFuelEU’s blending mandate for long-haul flights, as well as the volume of electricity necessary to generate the required SAF.

We also look at the potential for optimising the availability of SAF at airports, and the role that fleet renewal could have in accelerating the decarbonisation of long-haul flights.

Our findings indicate that:

• producing the required SAF and co-products for those long-haul flights would require an important upscaling of green/clean energy
• initially centralising SAF supplies at key airports with predominantly long-haul traffic could enhance efficiency, reduce infrastructure investments, and maximise environmental benefits (CO2 emissions, local air quality, and non-CO2, including contrail reduction), as well as ease the transition to deploying SAF at all European airports
• replacing aircraft older than 10 years could reduce the carbon emissions of the long-haul fleet by approximately 10%, also diminishing their SAF requirements
• significant synergies with other transport sectors could expedite SAF production: as road transport moves towards electrification, a substantial portion of the EU’s biofuel capacity could shift to aviation, also supporting maritime needs.