Toward cleaner skies
Sustainable fuel is ready—if you can find it
Swoopy tips
The Cessna Citation Longitude’s winglets cut induced drag and use evaporative, high-temperature anti-ice leading edge panels that reduce droplet runback.
Where: Wichita, Kansas
Photographer: Mike Fizer
It’s a great review of an alternative jet fuel that’s been around for several years. Made of all manner of biodegradable ingredients, SAF is eco-friendly and compatible with any Jet-A-burning turbine engine. It can even be mixed with Jet A.
It’s also scarce. AirBP says it’s the biggest provider of SAF, but you’ll look long and hard to find an FBO that carries the fuel. SAF is also pricey. That combination of high price and poor availability isn’t exactly a recipe for success. How to boost demand, lower prices, and encourage wider distribution? Incentivize refiners, pilots, and flight departments to buy into SAF—and do a better job publicizing FBOs that pump it.
A first step was made on June 24 when a bill—the proposed Sustainable Skies Act—was introduced in in the House and Senate. The bill would establish tax credits for fuel blenders and suppliers, ranging from $1.50 to $2 per gallon, for fuels that achieve a 50-percent greenhouse gas emissions reduction compared to conventional Jet A. That 50-percent figure is the aviation industry’s goal for reducing CO2 emissions by 2050.
The bill is designed to help drive down the amount of greenhouse gases aviation creates. Not that aviation puts out a lot to begin with. Aircraft account for only 3 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, but critics are always eager to assign blame—especially to general aviation’s turbine-powered segment. Sure, electric and hybrid-electric power are eco-friendly, but they put out emissions as well. Batteries, for example, must be charged via a power grid that’s driven by coal, nuclear, natural gas, or hydroelectric power, and those sources can adversely affect the environment.
SAF is eco-friendly and compatible with any Jet-A-burning turbine engine. It’s also scarce.
Believe it or not, solar-generated electricity is another solution—at least in a few cases, as demonstrated by Eric Raymond’s Sunseeker design, which flew across the United States in 1990. Or Paul MacCready’s Solar Challenger. Or the Solar Impulse 2, a Swiss design that flew around the world in 2015. But these designs require a lot of photovoltaic cells, which means a lot of wing area and span—and daylight! So, for the time being, solar power isn’t exactly practical for conventional aircraft designs or missions.
SAF, on the other hand, is ready now, if only we can get access to it.
