Why Collaboration Is Key To Aviation’s Progress In Sustainable Aviation Fuel

Ask The Expert: Aviation Week interviews Christine Bassitt, General Manager for Shell Aviation Americas, about the company’s progress with Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) and why collaboration is so important 

What momentum is there now for SAF purchases by US airlines and what has created it?

Last year a little over 15 million gallons of neat SAF was sold in the US, and that number will likely double or triple for 2023. That’s significant momentum. It comes from our engagement with customers, especially in the corporate sector. 

What is Shell Aviation’s approach to collaboration and working with multiple partners to help scale-up SAF? 

As a society we have to tackle the challenge of scaling SAF and decarbonizing aviation together, with collaboration between policy makers, suppliers, airlines, corporations, and NGOs, working across the value chain. 

We need all parties in the ecosystem involved to decarbonize what is a hard-to-abate sector. As the CEO of Boeing recently noted, the cost issue will always be there because SAF will always be more expensive to produce. But we have some great policy incentives, such as the Inflation Reduction Act and state incentives, and we can stack those measures. That has really helped to offset the cost hurdle of SAF.

In the US, we also have the SAF Grand Challenge with the Secretaries of Transportation, Agriculture and Energy working together to get to three billion gallons of SAF produced per year by 2030.

Shell is involved in global programs to scale SAF like the World Economic Forum’s Clean Skies For Tomorrow Coalition, the UK Government’s Jet Zero Council and Smart Freight Centre’s Book-and-Claim Community. We need these collaborations to tackle this challenge as an ecosystem. But some of the best examples of collaboration come from the recent SAF supply agreements we’ve signed with our customers, including Delta, Alaska Air and JetBlue.

What are the implications of Shell Aviation’s recently announced agreement with Montana Renewables?

The real significance is in the scaling up of SAF operations. Much of the previous progress has been small scale, this agreement signifies a scaling up of the supply chain for SAF, blending SAF in a sizeable amount, and delivering into normal airport operations.

Montana Renewables will be the biggest producer of SAF in North America, producing approximately 30 million gallons each year. We are working with them to bring that product to the market. Logistics is not as attention-grabbing as production, but we need every link in the supply chain. Shell is well-placed with our logistical assets and expertise, and making the logistics themselves sustainable and efficient is incredibly important.

How does this fit in with Shell’s ambition of increasing its supply of SAF in the short to medium-term?

It’s a huge stepping stone. But we’ve got some other big steps ahead. For example, our plant in Rotterdam will be producing SAF from 2025 on a large scale. 

Another big stepping stone is Avelia, a collaboration with American Express Global Business Travel and Accenture. Avelia is a global book-and-claim solution to track environmental attributes and measure those in a transparent, traceable and auditable way. That enables companies to view their data from purchasing SAF and helps to scale the demand for SAF from the corporate sector.
There's still work to do and one of Avelia’s aims is to validate and demonstrate the benefits of a book-and-claim methodology to secure NGO approval to claim emission reductions to help scale SAF. Avelia is an important step in proving out that model.

What role do you see corporate travel playing in the pathway to net zero?

Corporate travel will play a huge role, simply because of the numbers. Say you’re flying business class from New York to London, on a $5,000 ticket the SAF premium is maybe $50. That’s very affordable relative to the SAF premium on a $200 regional flight. 

Close to five thousand companies have net zero targets, and corporate travel usually accounts for a sizable portion of their carbon emissions. There’s only so much you can do to reduce carbon emissions from air travel on the ground; you can electrify the luggage carts and so forth, but that's really not going to move the needle. Most of the emissions in aviation come from the burning of jet fuel, and SAF is the only viable method we have for reducing the carbon footprint of flying here and now. Others may come, but at this stage they feel very remote. 

This is where Avelia comes into its own. As a book-and-claim SAF solution for business travel, it helps increase access to SAF, allowing airlines and corporations to share the benefits while both receiving credit for the carbon emission reductions. It is a win-win, collaborative solution – and representative of just the sort of thinking needed to scale SAF and decarbonize aviation.

Cautionary note: https://www.shell.com/investors/disclaimer-and-cautionary-note.html