The Sustainable Aviation Buyers Alliance, the group of companies that says they’ll offset flight emissions by investing in the still developing environmentally-friendly aviation fuel market, said Wednesday it is expanding with an initiative meant to lower the cost and boost the supply of sustainable fuel globally.
Amazon Air AMZN, 1.12%, Alaska Airlines ALK, -0.50%, JetBlue JBLU, 0.00%, and United Airlines UAL, 0.14% are the founding members of the new Aviators Group, which has a mission to “drive investment in high-integrity sustainable aviation fuels and accelerate the transition to net zero emissions air transport,” SABA said.
A joint initiative of clean-energy nonprofit RMI and the Environmental Defense Fund, SABA was launched in April 2021. The new Aviators Group enables SABA to send an even stronger demand signal to drive greater production, price reduction and technological innovation of sustainable aviation fuel, the group claims.
Air travel generates nearly 2.5% of global emissions. That’s a figure projected to rise rapidly in coming years, especially as jet fuel demand is expected to reach double pre-pandemic levels by 2050, SABA said.
High-integrity sustainable fuel available today has the potential to dramatically reduce the carbon intensity of flying, but currently represents less than 0.1% of global aviation fuel due to insufficient, disaggregated demand and cost barriers.
“Sustainable aviation fuels are critical to decarbonizing aviation and to Alaska’s path to reach net zero by 2040,” said Ben Minicucci, CEO of Alaska Airlines. “But production and supply are not yet where our industry needs them to be.”…
