The European Council and the Parliament reached a provisional political agreement on the European Commission’s ReFuelEU Aviation proposal, which will set new rules requiring fuel suppliers to blend SAF with kerosene in increasing amounts from 2025.

It calls for all flights departing from an EU airport to uplift a minimum share of SAF, starting at 2% in 2025, rising to 6% in 2030 and gradually to 70% by 2050.

Commenting on the agreement, Matteo Mirolo, Aviation Manager at Transport & Environment (T&E), says: ‘This pioneering deal is an unwavering endorsement of the world’s largest green fuel mandate for aviation. The EU has doubled down on synthetic fuels, which are key to decarbonising the sector, and limited the use of unsustainable biofuels in planes.’

The targets will include requirements for synthetic fuels (e-kerosene), with EU negotiators agreeing to a 1.2% synthetic fuel mandate between 2030 and 2031, and 2% between 2032 and 2035. ‘This is a stark increase from the original European Commission proposal (0.7% between 2030 and 2035) and a major win for the European Parliament,’ states T&E.

Negotiators also agreed on the definition of what constitutes a sustainable biofuel for aviation, excluding some of the most controversial biofuel feedstocks such as food crops and palm oil by-products. However, they kept some other ‘problematic’ feedstocks that are neither sustainable nor scalable, reports T&E.

It is understood that fuel suppliers will be able to meet targets with animal fats and used cooking oil (UCO), both of which are limited in supply. ‘Animal fats are by-products of the animal slaughter process. Their inclusion risks creating shortages in other industries that already use them, like the pet food industry. Palm oil is very often the chosen substitute for animal fats, says T&E. ‘Negotiators have not set a cap on the use of UCO, which could lead to demand from European aviation outstripping what the continent can sustainably provide, leaving it reliant on imports and increasing the risk of fraud,’ it warns.

In addition, under the agreement aircraft operators departing from EU airports will be required to carry only the volume of fuel they need for a particular flight in order to avoid further emissions associated with extra weight or carbon leakage caused by tanker practices. Furthermore, airports must ensure that their fuelling infrastructure is fit for distributing SAF.

The inclusion of non-CO₂ effects of aviation into the final agreement represents a ‘historic amendment’, according to T&E. Non-CO₂ emissions account for two thirds of aviation’s climate impact, but efforts to legislate them in the past were unsuccessful. This latest ReFuelEU agreement ‘opens the door to regulating the quality of the fuel to ensure it has lower aromatic concentrations and sulphur content’, notes T&E. ‘This is a significant step to reduce the non-CO₂ climate impacts in aviation, but also to improve air quality around airports.’

Matteo Mirolo concludes: ‘This deal and the latest provision on SAF allowances agreed upon in the carbon market (EU Emissions Trading System; ETS) provide airlines with the certainty that synthetic kerosene will become cheaper and widely available. The ramp-up of SAFs can now start, but there is more work to be done. Ensuring the success of SAFs will require industrial support policies for synthetic kerosene but also stronger safeguards to ensure that no unsustainable biofuels creep into airplane tanks.’

This latest agreement is an important step towards the implementation of the European Commission’s ‘Fit for 55’ legislative package, the EU’s strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels, and will help achieve the EU’s climate ambitions under the European Green Deal.

Civil aviation accounts for 13.4% of total CO₂ emissions from EU transport, reports the European Parliament, while the European Commission states that aviation emissions in Europe increased an average of 5% year-on-year between 2013 and 2019. Although dropping dramatically during the pandemic, aviation emissions are projected to grow further.

‘The increased climate ambition of the aviation sector will be crucial for the EU to reach its climate objectives under the Paris Agreement and make the European Green Deal a reality,’ states the Commission, adding that to achieve climate neutrality the EU needs to reduce transport emissions by 90% by 2050 (compared to 1990 levels).