aviation industry

Air France uses cooking oil to fly to Canada as green fuel debate rages

Reuters

This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.

Air France uses cooking oil to fly to Canada as green fuel debate rages

LOW EMISSIONS. Sustainable aviation fuel produced by Total is used for an Air France flight on May 18, 2021.

Air France's Twitter page

An Air France flight takes off with a 16% mix of sustainable aviation fuel, produced by Total from used cooking oil

Air France-KLM flew a biofuel-powered Airbus A350 from Paris to Montreal on Tuesday, May 18, demonstrating the airline’s readiness to adopt low-emissions fuel despite deep industry divisions over the pace of its adoption.

Air France flight 342 took off from Charles de Gaulle airport with a 16% mix of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in its fuel tanks, produced in France by Total from used cooking oil.

The flight signaled a “shared ambition to decarbonize air transportation and to develop a SAF supply chain in France,” the companies said in a joint statement with airport operator ADP.

Jet fuel produced from biomass or synthetically from renewable power has the potential to slash carbon emissions, albeit at a heavy cost by comparison to the price of kerosene.

Starting next year, flights departing from France will be required to use 1% SAF, ahead of European Union goals to reach 2% by 2025 and 5% by 2030 under the bloc’s Green Deal policy.

But traditional network airlines have sought to exempt long-haul flights, arguing that a Europe-only SAF requirement could expose them to unfair foreign competition.

That has drawn an angry response from low-cost airlines including Ryanair, Wizz Air, and EasyJet, which wrote to the EU in March to demand that the rules apply to all flights originating in Europe.

Airlines have a “major responsibility” to cut emissions, Air France-KLM chief executive Ben Smith said on Tuesday – while reiterating doubts about European SAF quotas for long-haul.

“We have to be on a level playing field,” Smith told Reuters. “We can’t have a situation where airlines that are based outside Europe can undercut us, [and] that is a real concern.”

Transport and Environment, a Brussels-based campaign group that signed the budget carriers’ open letter, again rejected calls to exclude long-haul from biofuel rules.

Any such exemption would have “no logic,” the group’s aviation director Andrew Murphy said.

Green fuel used for the Paris-Montreal flight was produced by Total at its Oudalle plant near Le Havre as well as La Mede, a refinery in southern France converted to biofuels in 2019. – Rappler.com

Add a comment

Sort by

There are no comments yet. Add your comment to start the conversation.

Summarize this article with AI

How does this make you feel?

Loading
Download the Rappler App!