Air travel's 'green' future: Why food-waste fuel is a long-haul project

Debate over banning short-distance flights takes off, but the cons outweigh the pros

SPANISH fuel giant CEPSA has developed 'green power' for national airlines – getting its homework done early in time for huge changes set for the year 2050.

The European Union has announced that, within 27 years, at least 70% of airline fuel must be from sustainable and renewable sources.

It is part of a bid to cut down on the huge emissions generated by aeroplane travel – which some key environmental activists, notably Sweden's Greta Thunberg, have publicly boycotted.

CEPSA is now producing non-polluting aviation fuel at its La Rábida Energy Park in Palos de la Frontera (Huelva province), using organic household waste.

This includes the contents of the 'food bin', which could be leftover meals, spoiled edibles, and residue such as fruit peel – all of which go in the 'brown bank' among Spain's recycling bin facilities. 

Not all towns have recycling bins for organic waste, despite EU requirements to have these in place by the end of the year 2021 – but where they do exist, their contents are normally used to make compost, or bio-fuel pellets for domestic heating stoves.

CEPSA is also making use of recycled cooking oil, which can be disposed of in most towns in Spain in a special 'orange bank' after pouring it back into its plastic bottle.

Enough fuel for 2,000 round-the-world flights in seven years

The La Rábida Energy Park, built in cooperation with Bio-Oils, is the largest 'green' fuel plant in southern Europe, fruit of a total joint investment of €1 billion.

Bio-combustible fuel created by CEPSA is now beginning to be sold in Spain's key airports – Madrid, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca and Sevilla, which account for over half the country's air traffic.

It was launched in Sevilla, where enough fuel for 200 flights was supplied earlier this year, making it the first airport in southern Europe to use 'green' energy for its planes.

CEPSA will, in fact, be the first company on the continent to become a continuous and consistent supplier of aircraft fuel from renewable sources.

Its head of aviation, Tobi Pardo, says the company hopes to produce 80,000 tonnes of bio-combustible fuel by the year 2030.

To put this in perspective, within seven years, CEPSA aims to generate enough 'green' fuel for a plane to fly the full circumference of the Earth 2,000 times.

Deals have been struck for bio-fuel supply with major Spanish and international carriers, including Iberia, Iberia Express, Air Nostrum – which covers domestic flights from Valencia – Vueling, Binter, TUI, Etihad, Wizz Air and Volotea.

Even though CEPSA's objectives are set at 'only' 80,000 tonnes, this is largely due to limitations on availability of raw material; the plant in Palos de la Frontera has capacity to generate up to half a million tonnes of sustainable airline fuel.

Short-haul domestic flights 'perfect laboratory' for 'green fuel' development

Despite its drive to stop air travel from aggravating climate change, CEPSA is firmly against the idea of banning very short flight routes already served by rail links – one of the hottest debates within the European Union.

France's recent veto of three routes of less than 500 kilometres – including the Toulouse-Barcelona flight path – has sparked concerns the same may happen south of the Pyrénées.

And CEPSA says short-haul internal flights are the 'perfect laboratory' for trialling bio-combustible fuel.

Until it is proven to sustain planes in the air for long enough to be rolled out for mainstream use, it cannot substitute kerosene, or 'standard' airline fuel – and that means national flights, which are typically only airborne for 30 to 60 minutes, are ideal for testing this new concept safely.

This view is shared by MEP and head of Renew Europe, José Ramón Bauzá, from the centre-right party Ciudadanos.

The Spaniard, speaking at a recent conference, said: “An airline and a technology firm will invest in short-distance pilot projects, with few passengers and small engines.

“Nobody's going to experiment on an inter-continental flight with 400-odd passengers and massive fuel consumption.”

Additionally, there is not enough 'green fuel' being produced as yet for it to be considered a viable substitute for kerosene.

It is already in use, but this is negligible, leading the Europe-wide committee ReFuelEU Aviation to set gradually-rising targets.

By 2025, a minimum of 2% of airline fuel must be from renewable sources, rising to 5% in 2030 before making a giant leap to 32% by 2040.

Some airlines, including those owned by IAG – such as Vueling and Iberia – and Ryanair have pledged to try to speed up this process.

But Bauzá warns that, although carriers are mostly very keen to research greener fuel options, they are reluctant to invest in something that may never come off.

The costs of attempting to develop sustainable fuel could cripple a business, or force carriers to pass on their extra expenses to customers in increased ticket prices.

Hydrogen-fuelled aircraft to take off in 12 years

According to easyJet's southern European manager and industry chairman for aviation in Spain, Javier Gándara, there is 'no easy solution', but hope lies in projects like CEPSA's and in hydrogen-fuelled aircraft.

Gándara says the first hydrogen planes will be in the air somewhere between 2035 and 2040, but would only initially be suitable for short flights.

Hydrogen would not provide enough autonomy for an aircraft to cover longer, international routes, meaning huge pressure on developers of Sustainable Airline Fuel (SAF), such as CEPSA.

But Gándara stresses that passenger aircraft are far more sustainable now than they were 30 years ago, as they have become more fuel-efficient through advances in technology; future improvements whilst planes still use kerosene, though, are likely to be limited.

'Green fuel' expensive to produce

Another hurdle for the aviation industry in meeting Brussels' target of a 55% reduction in air travel-based pollution by the year 2030 is that producing bio-combustible fuel costs between three and four times that of using kerosene.

Clearly, this would hail the end of budget flights, and could make even short-haul trips prohibitively expensive for the average traveller.

Gándara says governments will need to provide incentives to 'green fuel' creation, to make it a more cost-effective investment for the industry and encourage mass production, bringing the costs down through economies of scale.

To aid its quest, aviation companies have joined forces with public institutions and petroleum corporations, forming the Air Transport Sustainability Alliance.

Speaking at a conference at Madrid's Complutense University – co-presided by Air Europa boss Jesús Nuño de la Rosa – Gándara recalled that the international aviation sector has been calling for years for a 'European Open Skies' agreement to be put in place.

This, along with a more recent request to Brussels to guarantee flights could pass through non-EU countries, would streamline air travel by preventing forced diversions and delays.

Not having to take longer routes to arrive at destinations would also mean less time in the air, and potentially reduce fuel use and its consequent emissions by around 10%.

Banning domestic flights with rail alternative 'unworkable' for passengers, says Iberia

Axing flight routes that are also covered by rail – even high-speed connections – is not that simple, argue carriers based in Spain.

Even though the express AVE line roll-out in the past decade or two has led to a 50% drop in internal flight passengers – down from nine million to just over four million between 2007 and 2019, according to PwC – and that AVE trains only generate 1% of Spain's annual carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, the need for very short flights will remain unless there is a radical improvement in alternative transport methods.

National carrier Iberia says internal air links are necessary as connecting flights, since using the train instead means more stress, hassle and hanging around, and greater risk of missing one's plane.

Iberia agrees with Spain's government that a compromise could involve the AVE running directly into the terminal at Madrid's Adolfo Suárez-Barajas international airport, but that the current plans to do so will fall short of travellers' needs.

The government is working on having one or two trains per hour running straight into the airport, but Iberia says it will need a minimum of eight or 10 guaranteed arrivals per hour to have any chance of replacing internal flights – and this would involve a substantial investment by the State.

“Without domestic flights, we cannot attend to the demand of millions of travellers who need to connect with their medium- or long-haul flights,” insists Beatriz Guillón, head of Global Sales at Iberia.

The company agrees with the government's current stance – that it is not practical to ban domestic flights yet – and also with its argument that the transition of passengers from plane to train has been happening naturally as the AVE network develops.

But a blanket ban on flight routes also served by trains, such as those of under 500 kilometres, would mean as many as one in five air connections in Europe disappearing.

Internal flights generate thousands of jobs and millions for the economy, says PwC

Another issue for a blanket veto on short domestic flights involves jobs and national income. Research by PwC has concluded that the air links across Spain vulnerable to being scrapped due to having alternative high-speed rail connections – those between Madrid and Barcelona, Valencia, Alicante, Málaga and Sevilla – generate over €329 million per annum for the national economy.

This was the figure these routes earned in 2022, a year when tourism in general had still not quite recovered from the shutdown caused by the Covid pandemic.

And in that year, these domestic flights – without counting all others that run across the mainland – were directly responsible for 6,000 people being in full-time employment.

The direct financial impact of domestic flights in Spain per year is calculated at around €130m, whilst the indirect impact – from restaurants and cafés serving passengers awaiting boarding, among other complementary businesses – earned Spain around €199m.

In a country with some of the highest youth unemployment statistics in the EU and whose economy is heavily dependant upon tourism, the general view in Spain at the moment is that taking short-distance flights off air would be extremely ill-advised.