LATAM Airlines Group chief executive Roberto Alvo has warned that Latin America is making no progress on the development of a sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) industry, putting at risk airlines’ ability to meet net-zero targets.
Speaking on a panel of airline leaders at the IATA World Sustainability Symposium in Madrid on 3 October, Alvo concurred with peers that SAF is critical to the industry’s net-zero ambitions and that “today is not the time to think that this won’t happen”.
But the situation in Latin America is stark, Alvo explains, with SAF production essentially non-existent, leaving the region “one step behind”.
“Today there is not a single drop of SAF being produced in South America,” he says.
LATAM Airlines has set its own target of 5% SAF usage by 2023, but this is “not because we know where this is going to come from – it’s just because we need to make sure that we can start this conversation”, Alvo says, adding that he does not think the airline “has the luxury” of failing to do so.
“We needed a sign of demand, as the largest airline group in the region,” he states.
That sign has so far been met with no response, and Alvo is reluctant to consider the imposition of formal mandates by governments and regulators until that changes.
“Unfortunately at this point in time, we have no set of public policies to incentivise producers to start thinking about SAF,” he states. “Today, I don’t have any confidence that we will get even close to 5% [by 2030] with the current set of policies that we have.”…
