Assessment of sustainability standards for biojet fuel

ATA member airlines cover around 85% of all commercial flight operations. They have committed to ambitious climate change targets including carbon neutral growth from 2020 and a halving of CO2 emissions from the sector by 2050. While technological advances will play a role in this, sustainable aviation fuels have a crucial role to play in helping to completely de-couple emissions from growth. As both the technology and the economics of sustainable aviation fuel improve, we hope that the scale of use will increase considerably in future years. Without standards, the integrity of any product or system is weakened. Necessarily, many governments or regional bodies have established localised metrics governing the sustainability of aviation biofuel. The technical certification concerning aviation fuel quality, is designed and administered globally and with many airlines flying to numerous different countries and regions each day, there simply cannot be any variance in fuel performance. With the increasing use of sustainable aviation fuels, what is understood to be sustainable must be consistent throughout the world. It is increasingly important that the global policy on sustainability standards be aligned and for sustainable aviation fuels to have common metrics. While it may not be practical to redesign standards significantly in the quest for a global solution, it should be possible to harmonize legislation. Contents include:

• Overview of global legislation on biofuels
• Overview and comparison of relevant voluntary schemes (e.g. 2BSvs, Bonsucro EU, ISCC EU, RSB EU RED, RSPO-RED)
• Development of proposals for harmonisation
• Policy recommendations and next steps