As many as one billion passengers could flying on aircraft powered by a mix of jet fuel and sustainable aviation fuel by 2025, according to Iata.
The airline trade body made the projection on the tenth anniversary of the first flight to blend sustainable aviation fuel and ordinary jet fuel.
A Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747 flew from London to Amsterdam with sustainable aviation fuel in one of its engines in February 2008.
The flight demonstrated the viability of ‘drop-in’ biofuels, which can be blended with traditional jet fuel, using existing airport infrastructure.
A flight completely powered by sustainable fuel has the potential to reduce the carbon emissions by up to 80%.
The push to increase uptake of sustainable fuel is being driven by airlines aiming to achieve carbon-neutral growth from 2020 and to cut net carbon emissions by 50% compared to 2005.
A number of carriers, including Cathay Pacific, JetBlue, Lufthansa, Qantas, and United, have made investments by forward-purchasing 1.5 billion gallons of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
Airports in Oslo, Stockholm, Brisbane and Los Angeles are already mixing it with the general fuel supply.
On the present uptake trajectory, Iata anticipates that half a billion passengers will have flown on a SAF-blend powered flight by 2025.
But if governments help the sustainable fuel industry to scale-up its production through effective policy, Iata believes it is possible that one billion passengers could experience an SAF flight by 2025.
Acknowledging that some sources of biofuels for land transport have been criticized for their environmental credentials, Iata director general and CEO Alexandre de Juniac emphasised the industry’s determination to only use truly sustainable sources for its alternative fuels.
“The airline industry is clear, united and adamant that we will never use a sustainable fuel that upsets the ecological balance of the planet or depletes its natural resources,” he pledged.
“The momentum for sustainable aviation fuels is now unstoppable.
“From one flight in 2008, we passed the threshold of 100,000 flights in 2017, and we expect to hit one million flights during 2020.
But that is still just a drop in the ocean compared to what we want to achieve.
“We want one billion passengers to have flown on a sustainable aviation fuel-blend flight by 2025.
“That won’t be easy to achieve. We need governments to set a framework to incentivise production of sustainable aviation fuel and ensure it is as attractive to produce as automotive biofuels.”