Emirates announces “milestone” – sustainable flying one step closer

The airline Emirates announced a success last week: it was able to perform the first demonstration flight in the Middle East and North Africa using 100 percent sustainable aviation fuel. The Boeing took off from Dubai International Airport and flew along the coast of Dubai for over an hour.

That sounds like promising progress. Does this mean we will soon be able to fly around the world unscrupulously?

“Not at the moment,” says Laura Frommberg, editor-in-chief of aviation news site Aerotelegraph. She says: “The biggest problem is that the required quantity of sustainable fuels is far from being available. It may take a long time before flying is really 100 percent sustainable.”

Frommberg says the biofuels used by Emirates, for example, can be used in exactly the same way as conventional kerosene. However, the engines cannot currently be filled with 100 percent biofuel. Most airlines are just as interested in further developing the same fuels as Emirates. Many would also add at least small amounts of renewable fuels, explains Frommberg.

“The biofuels are important. But the challenge is that they are also CO₂ neutral and sustainable during production. Depending on the situation, this is not necessarily the case if, for example, other resources have to be used,” says Frommberg.

She adds that the production of biofuels is currently still very expensive. There are already subsidies in certain countries, but they would bring only moderate relief.

The question is therefore whether jet fuel can be produced and used completely sustainably.

Frommberg is optimistic about this: “Swiss is collaborating with the ETH spin-off ‘Synhelion’. The aim of this collaboration is to produce CO₂-neutral kerosene using concentrated sunlight. That would be a variant that would be completely CO₂ neutral. But this project is still in its infancy.”

It points to another promising energy carrier: hydrogen. “A study on this topic was recently published. This shows that about a third, or 31 to 38 percent, of all air kilometers in 2050 can be CO₂ neutral thanks to hydrogen. But that is only possible if research in this area is also subsidized,” says Frommberg.

(jub)