“Greenwashing the Skies”: New Institute for Policy Studies report exposes reality behind private jet industry’s “sustainable” aviation fuel efforts

FROM THE INSTITUTE FOR POLICY STUDIES

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Press contacts below

Washington, D.C. – A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies takes an in-depth look at the claims of the aviation industry regarding their “sustainable” aviation fuel,” or SAF, efforts. In plainspoken language, the report breaks down each of the industry’s claims and reveals the actual reality behind them.

The IPS report is particularly timely given recent developments, including: 1) the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Reauthorization passed in the Senate with an 88-4 vote on May 9 and the House is set to vote on it this week. The legislation expands the FAA’s Center of Excellence for Alternative Jet Fuels and Environment (ASCENT,) including “research and development activities on the use of alternative aviation fuels.” The full legislative tax of the FAA Reauthorization can be found here.

2) The Treasury department released guidelines for new Sustainable Aviation (SAF) Credit, created by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which provides a pathway for corn-based ethanol producers to qualify for the SAF Credit.  The IPS report and the MIT Technology Review point out that the emissions benefits of corn-based ethanol have been debated for decades.  As the IPS report states, “Using corn-based ethanol for jet fuel rather than food leads to additional land-clearing for farming, a process that may release additional carbon dioxide emissions from tree-cutting, plant and soil. The life cycle of ethanol production may add to climate pollution through planting, fertilizing and harvesting corn as well as refining, distributing and burning ethanol.”

Efforts to combat climate change often emphasize key goals regarding sustainable fuel sources, especially for industries like aviation that have such a large carbon footprint. Unfortunately, the report exposes the extent to which the private jet industry is not only failing to meet those goals, but may also be actively undermining them in some cases.

“When we hear the term ‘sustainable aviation fuels,’ we should be like a wise consumer considering a product labeled as ‘natural foods’ and take a closer look at the ingredients. While there are kernels of possibility, we should bring a high level of skepticism to the claims that alternative fuels will be a timely substitute for kerosene-based jet fuels,” the report warns.

The report concludes: 

• There is currently no realistic or scaleable alternative to kerosene-based fuels that would meet current aviation needs let alone projections of future growth.  SAF technologies are not moving at the speed of climate change and would fail to meet US Climate Goals for 2050.
• The scaling up of SAF production may thwart climate emission reduction goals. Burning some SAFs still emit CO2, sometimes more than regular aviation fuel. However, accompanying agricultural land use changes could threaten global food security as well as nature-based carbon sequestration solutions such as the preservation of forests and wetlands. Carbon removal from future plant growth will lag for an extended period of time or will not properly be offset. As such, SAF production may actively undermine the Paris Agreement goal of achieving greatly reduced emissions by 2050.
  • According to the World Resources Institute, the production of 35 billion gallons of SAF, as is the Biden administration’s current goal, would require 114 million acres of corn — 20 percent more than the current, total land area of corn crops in the U.S.
  • According to a 2023 report by the UK Royal Society, replacing jet fuel with biomass would require the UK to give up 50 percent of its agricultural land to sustain current flight passenger levels
• Realistic increases in SAF production are decades off. In 2022, the U.S. produced just 15.8 million gallons of SAF. It would require an 18,887 percent production increase over the next six years just to meet the Biden administration’s 2030 target of 3 billion gallons. To meet the 2050 target of 35 billion gallons, production would have to increase a whopping 227,400 percent over 2022 production levels.
• The aviation industry has a twenty-year history of missing benchmarks they set for themselves for SAF production. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) announced an aggressive climate goal in 2007, asserting that, within a decade, SAFs would account for 10 percent of all jet fuel consumed by the aviation sector. The target was never met. IATA proceeded for the next ten years to make their goals less ambitious while still failing to meet them. They predicted SAFs would hold a 3 percent market share by 2020, but it currently accounts  for just 0.2 percent of the total jet fuel supply.
• The cost of SAF infrastructure and production will require massive subsidies. The aviation industry is asking for substantial governmental subsidies in order to increase the scale of SAF production. The Biden administration has estimated that the necessary infrastructure to meet the annual production goal of 3 billion gallons by 2030 could cost roughly $30 billion in capital expenditures. The U.S. government would likely need to pour tens of billions of dollars into additional SAF subsidies to incentivize corporations to build relevant infrastructure and mandate the use of SAFs, thus further subsidizing the aviation industry and, specifically for our purposes, private jet travel.
• The aviation industry is already lobbying to weaken standards and sustainability definitions. Even while touting their commitment to sustainability, the US industry is aggressively lobbying to water down SAF definitions and move the goalposts in terms of benchmarks. “Big Aviation and Big Corn are already lobbying to include corn-based ethanol among the acceptable biofuels, even though there are negligible life cycle emissions reductions, especially factoring in land use changes,” the report states.

“Sustainable aviation fuel development is not moving at the speed of climate change. While it may be scientifically possible to create alternative jet fuels, it may be reckless in terms of the impact of land-use changes, government subsidies, and competing decarbonization needs in other sectors of the economy,” said Chuck Collins, co-author of the report and director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies.  “Many alternative fuels will require massive taxpayer subsidies and huge amounts of biomass and food stocks that will claim huge amounts of land, displacing carbon sequestering forests and agricultural land currently being used for food production.”

“Our report highlights something that is missing in our public debate: if we expand the availability of sustainable aviation fuels using current methods of production, it will paradoxically not get us any closer to achieving our emission reduction goals,” said Omar Ocampo, co-author of the report and a researcher at the Institute for Policy Studies. “The best way to decarbonize private jet travel is to fly less and seek alternative modes of transportation.”

A 2023 study by the Institute for Policy Studies, “High Flyers 2023,” carefully examined publicly available data and found that approximately 1 percent of people are believed to be responsible for about half of all aviation carbon emissions. Since the start of the pandemic, private jet use has increased by about a fifth and private jet emissions have increased more than 23 percent, according to a recent study. Private aviation makes up approximately one out of every six flights handled by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) but contribute just 2 percent of the taxes that make up the trust fund that primarily funds the FAA.

In its conclusion, the new report strongly recommends more research on SAFs and on the best way to produce them, from independent research entities not funded or influenced by the fossil fuel or aviation industries.

“The private jet lobby loves to talk about sustainable aviation fuels because there is a growing public understanding that private luxury jet travel is indefensible on a warming planet. At this stage it is a marketing distraction, not a scalable reality,” added Chuck Collins. “Decarbonizing luxury private jet travel should take a backseat to many other societal expenditures and needs as we transition away from fossil fuels.”

Read the full analysis: https://ips-dc.org/report-greenwashing-the-skies

Press contacts:

Olivia Alperstein, +1 (202) 704-9011, olivia@staging.ips-dc.org

Chuck Collins, +1 (617) 308-4433, chuck@staging.ips-dc.org

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