Boeing banks on sustainable aviation fuel to run aircraft

Bloomberg

As flying electric taxis and hydrogen fuel take center stage at the Singapore Airshow, Boeing Co’s plan to clean up aviation is far less revolutionary.
Rather than banking on new technology and different propulsion systems, the Chicago-based company is pushing a solution that will limit disruption to its mainstay plane-making business: Run the aircraft on sustainable aviation fuel.
“You don’t have to change the airplane, you don’t have to change the airport infrastructure,” Sheila Remes, Boeing’s vice president of environmental sustainability, said in Singapore, where she was attending the show. “It’s available now so you don’t have a whole amount of
infrastructure and complexity that needs to be added into the system.”
Boeing’s focus on SAF, as it’s known, sets it apart from the more openly ambitious Airbus SE. The European rival aims to put a hydrogen-powered aircraft into the skies by 2035. At the Singapore Airshow, Airbus agreed to explore the potential for a hub in the city to store hydrogen and deliver it to jets. Other companies including AirAsia, meanwhile, announced deals for close to 200 eVTOLs, or electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft.
Remes said the current shortcomings of alternative technologies mean sustainable fuel will be aviation’s most-powerful decarbonisation tool for years to come. The range of electric aircraft will be limited unless there’s “gigantic battery technology improvement,” she said. And while Boeing is exploring how hydrogen might be integrated into commercial aircraft, Remes said it’s “going to be hard.”
The industry’s differing approaches — and vested interests — underscore the complexity of eliminating aviation’s carbon emissions on a net basis by 2050. The cost of transitioning from fossil-derived jet fuel will be $2 trillion, according to the IATA. Not even the industry agrees on how it will break decades-old habits, or who will pay for it.
Boeing and Airbus aren’t totally at odds. Both say that by 2030 their commercial aircraft will be able to fly on 100% sustainable fuels, which can be made from feedstocks including agricultural and forestry waste and non-recyclable household waste.