The EU has been caught lobbying itself on its ReFuelEU rules, which would require blending 6% SAF by 2030. But the real scandal is how much it would cost holidaymakers and businesses.
While I am pretty open to this being a bad policy, I remember some myopic people arguing 15 years ago that renewable electricity subsidies were bad policy pursuing excessively expensive abatement when cheaper options were available and could make more impact for the money. I was one of those nearsighted individuals! And blitheringly wrong because experience and scale, propelled by initial money-vomiting subsidies, made wind and solar much cheaper as they got deployed.
Do you see any potential for this kind of effect to create greater value than the derisory direct abatement from a modest-scale but hidden-subsidy-rich EU SAF mandate?
You would have a good point if the learning curve for e-kerosene was anything like that for PV, batteries or even wind. But it won't be.
Green hydrogen is made in chemicals plants where the feedstock is electricity. The electrolyser stacks can get cheap fast, but they only drive 10% of the cost of green hydrogen. Then you add DAC, which costs $600/tonne and has no pathway to get to the $200/tonne cost its boosters claim because it's a load of fans and more chemistry. And then it's a Fischer Tropsch plant, which neither the Nazis or Apartheid South Africa made cheap. Oh, and then you only have syncrude, so you have to refine that to make SAF (or maybe you made an alcohol, but then you need to do Alcohol-to-jet).
So I'm sorry, it's a dead end. And the sooner we realise it the better.
I think the key question here is how much of this spending should go toward the overall transition. Of course, it's true that we can reduce emissions more efficiently today by focusing on proven and cost-effective solutions. But we also need to develop the markets for the solutions we’ll need tomorrow. It's not just R&D that drives costs down—markets do that too.
My point is: yes, the majority of funding should go to scaling the cheapest, most effective solutions and deploying them globally. But we also need to allocate a portion of the investment to R&D and to building markets for technologies that aren’t yet mature. The real discussion—and it’s a valuable one—is about how much we allocate to each side of that equation
The RFNBO regulations don’t fund R&D, they fund roll-out and attempt to engage economies of scale.
But even R&D spending would need to be focused on solutions that might one day be economically viable. We wouldn’t do R&D today on a steam-powered family car, for instance, so why would we do one on cars powered by efuels. Same with planes.
Bottom line, e-kerosene is 11.5x more expensive than jet fuel, biofuels are 2.8x, and biogenic CDR is 1x more expensive - and they are all on the same learning curve. Go figure.
What pathways do you think are viable for decarbonizing aviation cost effectively? We need to figure out in-supply chain solutions, and drop-in fuels seem to have the fastest path to decarb.
You mentioned e-kerosene won't have the same learning curves as solar, but with economies of scale, could it at least become cost competitive with jet fuel? Agree with Pedro that we need to invest in building markets for early technologies.
Agree with all your proposed alternatives except all the bio stuff. Have you ever calculated how much of the world's arable land would be needed to grow it? It is a fantasy that there is a lot of waste, cooking oil or animal fat to go round. The spatial inefficiency of photosynthesis is completely unacceptable for energy purposes; at least two orders of magnitude lower than solar pv. At the end of the day we need to figure out a way to turn sustainable electrons into hydrocarbons.
Plant science has, can and will drive sustainable intensification of agriculture to efficiently covert incident sunlight into long chain carbon as plant oils. Perhaps Europe would be well advised to change agricultural policies to join the rest of the world on that journey, increasing feedstock availability while still feeding the population?
Agreed, SAF has to become cheaper, but 20% increase on fuel cost is no show stopper for aviation . And aviation is not expensive considering its impact. We could start taxing aviation fuel based on their CO2 emission. That would help.
While we figure out the technology to decrease the cost for SAF, we have to build up the infrastructure to utilise it.
If we are not developing that technologies and use it for heat pumps instead, as you suggest we are loosing the chance to introduce SAFs once they become affordable since we don't know how to trade transport and blend them.
So I appreciate you controversial view and agree often, but in this case I think it is just contra and it lacks substance.
Great rethink. SAF is trendy and aviation is an incredibly easy target for activists and policymakers, but we need more rationality and less passion in climate debates because there is much more effective lower-hanging fruit we should be going after. I'm 100% for taxing aviation to support rail. This startup looks promising: https://noxmobility.com/ — one-seat, comfortable, convenient night trains between major EU cities. More of this, please!
Why are you assuming all the carbon needs to come from DAC? I see huge opportunities to tie SAF into planned CCUS projects. Or do you think Northern Lights/ Northern Endurance/HyNet are unlikely to scale?
While I am pretty open to this being a bad policy, I remember some myopic people arguing 15 years ago that renewable electricity subsidies were bad policy pursuing excessively expensive abatement when cheaper options were available and could make more impact for the money. I was one of those nearsighted individuals! And blitheringly wrong because experience and scale, propelled by initial money-vomiting subsidies, made wind and solar much cheaper as they got deployed.
Do you see any potential for this kind of effect to create greater value than the derisory direct abatement from a modest-scale but hidden-subsidy-rich EU SAF mandate?
You would have a good point if the learning curve for e-kerosene was anything like that for PV, batteries or even wind. But it won't be.
Green hydrogen is made in chemicals plants where the feedstock is electricity. The electrolyser stacks can get cheap fast, but they only drive 10% of the cost of green hydrogen. Then you add DAC, which costs $600/tonne and has no pathway to get to the $200/tonne cost its boosters claim because it's a load of fans and more chemistry. And then it's a Fischer Tropsch plant, which neither the Nazis or Apartheid South Africa made cheap. Oh, and then you only have syncrude, so you have to refine that to make SAF (or maybe you made an alcohol, but then you need to do Alcohol-to-jet).
So I'm sorry, it's a dead end. And the sooner we realise it the better.
I think the key question here is how much of this spending should go toward the overall transition. Of course, it's true that we can reduce emissions more efficiently today by focusing on proven and cost-effective solutions. But we also need to develop the markets for the solutions we’ll need tomorrow. It's not just R&D that drives costs down—markets do that too.
My point is: yes, the majority of funding should go to scaling the cheapest, most effective solutions and deploying them globally. But we also need to allocate a portion of the investment to R&D and to building markets for technologies that aren’t yet mature. The real discussion—and it’s a valuable one—is about how much we allocate to each side of that equation
The RFNBO regulations don’t fund R&D, they fund roll-out and attempt to engage economies of scale.
But even R&D spending would need to be focused on solutions that might one day be economically viable. We wouldn’t do R&D today on a steam-powered family car, for instance, so why would we do one on cars powered by efuels. Same with planes.
Bottom line, e-kerosene is 11.5x more expensive than jet fuel, biofuels are 2.8x, and biogenic CDR is 1x more expensive - and they are all on the same learning curve. Go figure.
What pathways do you think are viable for decarbonizing aviation cost effectively? We need to figure out in-supply chain solutions, and drop-in fuels seem to have the fastest path to decarb.
You mentioned e-kerosene won't have the same learning curves as solar, but with economies of scale, could it at least become cost competitive with jet fuel? Agree with Pedro that we need to invest in building markets for early technologies.
Thank you!
Agree with all your proposed alternatives except all the bio stuff. Have you ever calculated how much of the world's arable land would be needed to grow it? It is a fantasy that there is a lot of waste, cooking oil or animal fat to go round. The spatial inefficiency of photosynthesis is completely unacceptable for energy purposes; at least two orders of magnitude lower than solar pv. At the end of the day we need to figure out a way to turn sustainable electrons into hydrocarbons.
Plant science has, can and will drive sustainable intensification of agriculture to efficiently covert incident sunlight into long chain carbon as plant oils. Perhaps Europe would be well advised to change agricultural policies to join the rest of the world on that journey, increasing feedstock availability while still feeding the population?
Agreed, SAF has to become cheaper, but 20% increase on fuel cost is no show stopper for aviation . And aviation is not expensive considering its impact. We could start taxing aviation fuel based on their CO2 emission. That would help.
While we figure out the technology to decrease the cost for SAF, we have to build up the infrastructure to utilise it.
If we are not developing that technologies and use it for heat pumps instead, as you suggest we are loosing the chance to introduce SAFs once they become affordable since we don't know how to trade transport and blend them.
So I appreciate you controversial view and agree often, but in this case I think it is just contra and it lacks substance.
Great rethink. SAF is trendy and aviation is an incredibly easy target for activists and policymakers, but we need more rationality and less passion in climate debates because there is much more effective lower-hanging fruit we should be going after. I'm 100% for taxing aviation to support rail. This startup looks promising: https://noxmobility.com/ — one-seat, comfortable, convenient night trains between major EU cities. More of this, please!
Why are you assuming all the carbon needs to come from DAC? I see huge opportunities to tie SAF into planned CCUS projects. Or do you think Northern Lights/ Northern Endurance/HyNet are unlikely to scale?
Not to mention the knock-on impact the policy has on deforestation in SE Asia https://carbonrisk.substack.com/p/frequent-fryer