United Airlines is boosting how it uses Sustainable Air Fuel on its flights, with the expansion of the use of the fuel type.
The airline announced that it would begin using a blend of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) on departing flights from San Francisco International Airport and is planning to use a SAF blend later this year at London Heathrow Airport, which could put the airline on track to use approximately 10 million gallons in 2023, nearly three times more than 2022 and close to 10 times more than 2019.
The SAF that United is using today in San Francisco and Amsterdam is provided by Neste, with their MY Sustainable Aviation Fuel product. It is produced from sustainably sourced, 100% renewable waste and residue raw materials, including used cooking oil and animal fat waste.
In the future, SAF could be made from other feedstocks, including household trash, forest waste, algae or compressed CO2. To date, United has invested in the future production of over 5 billion gallons of SAF.
The funding for the extra costs that SAF brings is being funded via what United calls “Eco-Skies Alliance Round 3”, to allow corporate customers to build transparency and enable true, certified SAF emissions reductions associated with travel of people or goods on United flights – or things that look good when companies write up their Environmental and Sustainable Goals reports.
In Quotes
United Chief Sustainability Officer Lauren Riley said:
“It’s remarkable to see that in just a few years United has exponentially increased its SAF use,”
“While 10 million gallons of SAF in 2023 represents a fraction of what we need, we have also made big investments in producers that are using everything from ethanol to algae, to CO2, to help increase our available future supply. We believe these investments, along with our continued collaboration with policymakers, cross-industry businesses, and other airlines will help us scale this brand-new industry to achieve comparable success to solar and wind.”
The journey continues for SAF – as do the challenges
It’s welcoming to see the uptake of SAF as the industry continues to adapt to new realities and their responsibilities.
We all know by now (and if you’ve read this blog, you’d know that SAF supply is going to be interesting as airlines continue to demand the fuel in quantity as well as in what blended state it’s in).
And there’s further to go, apart from the supply constraint of SAF – such as flights constantly powered by 100% SAF, as powerplant manufacturers and aircraft OEMs work out how to power the next generation of aircraft – be that with SAF, Hydrogen or Electric power.
SAF provides an answer for today – you just need to industrial output of the fuel to meet the requirements.
And that is the real challenge currently.
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