Estimating the Reduction in Future Fleet-Level CO2 Emissions From Sustainable Aviation Fuel

• Published in: Frontiers in energy research Vol. 9
• Main Authors: Jain, Samarth, Chao, Hsun, Mane, Muharrem, Crossley, William A., DeLaurentis, Daniel A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A 29.11.2021
• Subjects: airline fleet-level predictions; commercial aviation CO2 emissions; future aviation CO2 scenarios; model-based prediction method; sustainable aviation fuels (SAF)
• DOI: 10.3389/fenrg.2021.771705
• ISSN: 2296-598X

With rising concerns over commercial aviation’s contribution to global carbon emissions, the aviation industry faces tremendous pressure to adopt advanced solutions for reducing its share of CO 2 emissions. One near-term potential solution to mitigate this global emissions situation is to operate existing aircraft with sustainable aviation fuel (SAF); this solution requires almost no modification to current aircraft, making it the “quickest” approach to reduce aviation carbon emissions, albeit the actual impact will be determined by the degree to which airlines adopt and use SAF, the ticket price impact of SAF, and the future growth of travel demand. This article presents results that estimate the expected fleet-wide emissions of future airline operations using SAF considering various projected traveler demand and biofuel penetration/utilization levels. The work demonstrates an approach to make these predictions by modeling the behavior of a profit-seeking airline using the Fleet-Level Environmental Evaluation Tool (FLEET). Considering five future SAF scenarios and two future passenger demand projection scenarios, FLEET estimates future fleet-level CO 2 emissions, showcasing the possible upper and lower bounds on future aviation emissions when SAF is introduced for use in airline fleets. Results show that the future fleet-level CO 2 emissions for all scenarios with SAF are lower than the baseline scenario with no SAF, for all demand projection scenarios. The passenger demand served and the trips flown for a given SAF scenario depends on the SAF price and the biofuel penetration levels. This shows that even if airlines serve a higher passenger demand for some future scenarios, the carbon emissions could still be lower than the current baseline scenario where airlines only use conventional jet fuel.