Sustainable aviation fuel is going to eat up farmland - Yorkshire Post Letters

The fire at one of the substations that provides power to Heathrow provided a reminder of the many hundreds of flights that the airport handles every day. Chancellor Reeves justified the recent government announcement supporting a series of airport expansions by stating that 'sustainable aviation fuel' (SAF) was a 'game changer' that will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 70 per cent.

Currently the UK is committed to a 2 per cent SAF content in aviation kerosene and is providing £63m to boost production. To date this is predominantly derived from used cooking oil, 80 per cent of which is imported from China and Malaysia.

It is planned that the SAF content will increase to 22 per cent by 2040 by which time it is forecast that passenger numbers will have doubled, equating globally to 200,000 flights day consuming over 18 million barrels of aviation fuel.

This will necessitate the use of multiple sources of feedstock such as municipal waste, sewage and a vast area of land dedicated to growing bioenergy crops.These are already grown on a massive scale to provide the E10 element in the petrol, thus further reducing the area of land available for growing food.

Alternatively SAF could be produced in the form of green hydrogen but this would require up to 3.4 times more wind and solar capacity than at present.

Clearly the Chancellor has not taken the trouble to read the report from the Royal Society which concludes that this course of action could be up to 69 per cent more carbon intensive than using standard kerosene jet fuel and could result in 'unacceptable collateral ecological damage'.

Airline operators may be keen to be seen as environmentally responsible but in reality they and the Chancellor are hiding behind another green smokescreen that fails to stand up to robust scrutiny.