Economic impact on European Airlines of the implementation of a SAF policy

In the recent years, there has been a significant increase of social awareness towards sustainability. Such awareness has translated into an increased pressure over specific sectors regarded as ¿poluters¿, in which the air transport falls. Therefore, airlines need to adapt their operations to this new environment. The aim of this report is twofold; first, analyse how the implementation of SAF (Sustainable Aviation Fuel) policy would affect costs for airlines; second, study the trade-offs between SAF and current jet-fuel. The Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) is a blend of jet fuel and renewable feedstocks. To study the economic impact of the airlines due to the SAF implementation, an economic model in excel is created. This model gathers all European short and medium haul flights of 2019. Therefore, the aim of the project is to obtain the fuel and the emissions costs per flight. These variables mentioned before, are applied to different European scenarios, but also both variables are under-evaluation of different percentages of blend (from 0 -100%). With this information, it is possible to understand the economic impact on the airlines. First, regarding to the fuel costs, it is possible to see that the costs increase with the implementation of SAF, since the cost of this new type of fuel is three times more expensive than the regular fuel cost. Considering that the fuel costs contribute up to 30% of the airlines expenses, apparently, the SAF implementation produces an increase of this percentage. On the contrary, the costs of the emissions experiment several decreases. As the percentage of blend increases, the emissions get reduced, consequently, the costs are reduced. This information, let us to understand that it is possible to mitigate the pollution created by the aviation sector. Therefore, Europe is working on an action plan named ¿Net-Zero emissions by 2050". The aim of the plan is to encourage airlines to implement SAF, since this new type of fuel is possible to apply it gradually (increasing the feedstock percentage and reducing the jet fuel percentage).Objectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::11 - Ciutats i Comunitats Sostenible