Latest news and insights from various sources relating to UN Sustainable Development Goals.
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Tue 8 May 2018 – A trade delegation led by the Alberta government has flown from Edmonton to San Francisco on an Air Canada Airbus A320-200 flight powered by biofuel.
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Wed 15 Aug 2018 – Wildlife traffickers are highly dependent on commercial air transport to move their contraband quickly, where they continue to exploit vulnerabilities in the system, and instances of trafficking have been recorded in 136 countries around the world.
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Thu 13 Dec 2018 – A transition to electrical propulsion is required if aviation’s current share of global CO2 emissions, around 3%, is to remain the same by 2050, reports consultancy Roland Berger.
Wed 31 May 2017 – London Gatwick and Lyon-Saint Exupery have become the latest European airports to achieve the highest carbon-neutral level of the industry’s Airport Carbon Accreditation programme. This brings the total of carbon neutral airports in Europe to 27, over half way to reaching an industry goal of 50 by 2030, with four other airports in Asia and one in North America also having reached Level 3+ neutrality. Lyon initially entered the programme at the first ‘Mapping’ level of the programme in 2013 and has since worked its way up through the four levels. To coincide with its announcement of reaching carbon neutrality status, Gatwick has published its ‘Decade of Change’ report for 2016 which charts progress against 10 environmental and community-focused targets the airport has set itself for the 2010-2020 period.
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Wed 18 Oct 2017 – Geneva Airport has entered into a contract with public energy utility Geneva Industrial Services (SIG) to install solar panels on 50,000 square metres of roof space – the equivalent of about eight football pitches. The array will produce around 7.5 GWh of electricity per year, the equivalent of the annual power consumption of 2,500 local homes. The photovoltaic solar panels will be installed on 10 roofs located around the airport, with an expected completion date of 2020. SIG will build and own the panels for 25 years and has committed 13 million Swiss francs ($13.2m) in funding for the project. The electricity produced by the facility will primarily be used to power the airport, which already boasts solar panels covering 10,000 square metres.
“Sustainable development has been defined as a strategic objective in all activities of the airport,” said André Schneider, Director General of Geneva Airport, announcing the project.
Since 2012, the airport has purchased a combination of renewable energy – solar and biomass – and hydropower from SIG. A solar heating installation enables hot water to be produced for the airport fire brigade building and in 2006 a solar power plant was installed on the main hangar roof and operated by Edisun Power. Hot water for domestic and heating use by more than half the airport is produced by an extra light oil-fired thermal station. In 2010, two solar panel arrays were installed on airport buildings that are now supplying 470 MWh of electricity.
Following a Swiss referendum in May, the country plans to decommission its nuclear power plants over time and shift to renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and geothermal power, with the aim of generating 20% of the country’s electricity through solar alone.
SIG currently owns and manages 39 solar power plants in the canton of Geneva with a production capacity of 48 GWh, and by 2025 expects to ramp this up to 150 GWh of solar power per year.
Last month, Geneva Airport announced it was collaborating with Finland’s Neste to supply renewable jet fuel from late 2018 to airlines serving the airport (see article).
Copyright © 2017 GreenAir Communications
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Tue 14 Aug 2018 – Lawyers acting for a consortium of local authorities have issued judicial review proceedings in the High Court against the UK’s Transport Secretary over the expansion of Heathrow Airport.
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Tue 11 Dec 2018 – A unique airline/airport cooperation has been agreed that will see all domestic flights from Kalmar to Stockholm meet a 5% biofuel target in 2019.
Fri 26 May 2017 – With barely 18 months before all countries with aircraft operators undertaking international flights are required to start monitoring carbon emissions, ICAO faces a major challenge in finalising the important standards that will underpin its global CORSIA carbon offsetting scheme. While 69 States have so far agreed to participate from the beginning of the pilot phase in 2021, many more will be affected by the monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) requirements of the scheme. However, the ICAO leadership is confident that the draft standards are on course to be formally adopted in a year’s time, although concedes additional resources will be needed for the development and implementation of the scheme. The UN agency’s environment chief, Jane Hupe, told a recent seminar in Montreal that CORSIA should not be seen as a ‘carte blanche’ which allowed the sector to increase its emissions unchecked and the aim was to do everything possible to reduce aviation’s climate impact.
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Tue 17 Oct 2017 – Qantas has announced that its flights from Los Angeles will be powered by biofuel from 2020 as a result of an off-take agreement with US bioenergy company SG Preston. The Australian airline says it will purchase 8 million gallons (30 million litres) of renewable jet fuel per year for a 10-year period. The fuel will be a 50/50 blend of conventional jet fuel and renewable fuel produced from non-food plant oils that is claimed to emit half the comparable amount of carbon emissions on a life-cycle basis. Last year, SG Preston entered into a similar off-take agreement with JetBlue in which the US carrier will purchase more than 33 million gallons of blended jet fuel per year for at least 10 years, with the renewable jet fuel portion making up 30% of the total blend. Meanwhile, Qantas rival Virgin Australia has announced it will shortly start trialling the use of renewable jet fuel supplied by Gevo through Brisbane Airport’s existing fuel supply system.
Qantas and JetStar operated Australia’s first biofuel trial flights in 2012, which both used fuels derived from used cooking oil blended 50/50 with conventional jet fuel. The agreement though with SG Preston is the first of its kind in Australian aviation history, said Gareth Evans, CEO of Qantas International and Freight.
“The partnership with SG Preston is part of our commitment to lowering carbon emissions across our operations and sees us becoming the first Australian airline to use renewable jet fuel on an ongoing basis,” he said. “As an airline group we are constantly looking for ways to become more fuel efficient and embrace new technologies and this partnership is a significant step on that journey.
“Our agreement allows us to secure a supply for our Los Angeles based aircraft where we have a large fuel demand and where the biofuel industry is more advanced.”
The Virgin Australia trial is a reverse situation in which US renewable alcohol-to-jet (ATJ) fuel company Gevo will ship four batches of jet biofuel to Brisbane, Queensland, over the two-year course of the trial, with the first batch expected this month. The Virgin Australia Group is responsible for coordinating the purchase, supply and blending of the ATJ into the fuel supply system at Brisbane Airport. The ATJ will be shipped from Gevo’s hydrocarbon plant in Silsbee, Texas, having been derived from isobutanol produced at its commercial plant in Luverne, Minnesota.
“This initiative builds on Virgin Australia’s commitment to be a leader in the commercialisation of the sustainable aviation fuel industry in Australia,” said CEO John Borghetti. “The project is critical to testing the fuel supply chain infrastructure in Australia to ensure that Virgin Australia and Brisbane Airport are ready for the commercial supply of these exciting fuels.”
Queensland is looking to exploit locally abundant carbohydrate-based feedstocks to support building renewable jet fuel production plants in the future and the Queensland government is supporting the Gevo/Virgin Australia venture as a first step.
“We believe Queensland offers huge potential for low-cost, biomass-based feedstocks to produce biofuels,” said GEVO CEO Dr Patrick Gruber.
Qantas said it was exploring renewable jet fuel opportunities in Australia and working with suppliers to develop locally produced biofuels for aviation use.
Virgin Australia had partnered with Air New Zealand in issuing a request for information (RFI) in March 2016 seeking companies interested in meeting the long-term biofuel goals of the two airlines (see article). Although still intending to share knowledge and information, they have since gone their separate ways.
This past August, Air New Zealand said it had narrowed the field from an initial list of around 30 to two companies, one of which was US-based Fulcrum BioEnergy. The municipal waste to renewable jet fuel provider has United Airlines and Cathay Pacific among its shareholders. The other unnamed company is believed to be based overseas and interested in bringing its technology to New Zealand to locally produce biofuels from, most likely, wood waste from the timber industry.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk visited the Fulcrum waste-to-fuels plant in Nevada on a trade visit to the United States in June.
Links:
Virgin Australia – Renewable Jet Fuel
Air New Zealand – Sustainability
Copyright © 2017 GreenAir Communications
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Wed 20 June 2018 – Aviation industry representatives have urged members of the governing ICAO Council to adopt the rules necessary for the implementation of the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA).