AVIATION’S INVOLVEMENT IN CARBON CAPTURE

So far, carbon capture is only starting to be considered by aviation as a net zero solution. But already, there have been some significant announcements.

In July, during the Farnborough Air Show, Airbus signed a carbon removal MOU alongside a number of airlines, including Air Canada, Air France-KLM, easyJet, International Airlines Group, LATAM Airlines Group, Lufthansa Group and Virgin Atlantic.

As part of the agreements, the airlines have committed to engage in negotiations on the possible pre-purchase of verified and durable carbon removal credits starting in 2025 through to 2028.

Those credits will be issued by Airbus’ partner 1PointFive – a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum and the global deployment partner of direct air capture company Carbon Engineering (who we will come back to in the report).

Airbus’ partnership with 1PointFive will include the pre-purchase of 400,000 tonnes of carbon removal credits to be delivered over four years.

Of course, for now this is only an MOU, and there are lots of MOUs and Letters of Intent when it comes to airlines and the envirotech space. However, it’s an important start.

As we mentioned in the introduction, United boss CEO Scott Kirby is very much a believer in carbon removal technology, so the US carrier is a step ahead of Airbus and its partners.

In June, United announced an agreement with Dimensional Energy, to turn carbon dioxide into SAF.

Dimensional Energy is using the FischerTropsch process – a nearly 100-year-old proven technology. And it’s worth noting that synthetic fuels are not new, and you can go back as far as WW2 to find them being made in significant quantities using Fischer-Tropsch.

Similarly, Alaska Airlines has partnered with tech giant Microsoft to collaborate on working toward the first commercial demonstration flight in the United States powered by Twelve’s E-Jet fuel.

Twelve’s E-Jet uses renewable energy, water, and CO2 as inputs to transform CO2 into a variety of critical chemicals and materials conventionally made from fossil fuels.

The aim is to work towards a demonstration flight using E-Jet, and to supply the fuel to address some of Microsoft’s business travel on Alaska Airlines.

Use it or bury it?

Last year, think tank Transport & Environment, which has at times taken a sceptical view on aviation, commissioned a report by the Öko-Institut (Germany) on the benefits of carbon storage vs E-Fuels -or as they put it, when it comes to CO2, should the industry “use it or bury it?”

The conclusion of the report was that carbon removal will be cheaper than the production of e-fuels, but that e-fuels might have a better environmental impact due to it helping the industry move away from a fossil-fuels based model.

“It is not unlikely that the DACCS option is more cost-effective than the e-fuels option

“It might result in carbon lock-in and may make the transition to a post-fossil approach at a later stage even more expensive due to the persisting fossil-based capital stock and infrastructure.

“Taking into account that the difference between the e-fuels and the DACCS option ranges in 2050 between 1.0% and 2.5% of the ticket price, which can certainly be borne by passengers, it should be considered whether embarking on the e-fuels option would be more consistent with the precautionary principle as the basic rule of environmental policy.”