China could become a major catalyst for the widespread adoption of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), considering its success in solar power development and electric vehicles rollout, senior executives at Cathay Pacific Airways have told Bloomberg.
Cathay Pacific is collaborating with the Chinese authorities, state-owned utility State Power Investment Corp, and academics to look into ways of producing sustainable fuels at viable costs, the airline's CEO Ronald Lam told Bloomberg in an interview published on Tuesday.
According to Grace Cheung, General Manager of Sustainability at Cathay, China could accelerate the ongoing global efforts to produce SAF if it has a national strategy for clean aviation fuels just like it has for EVs and solar power.
"When a supportive SAF policy is in place in China, things will happen very quickly, and have a very impactful result," Cheung told Bloomberg.
According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), sustainable aviation fuel has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions by up to 80%.
Despite numerous pledges from airlines and government support for SAF production, the alternative of the petroleum-based jet fuel faces challenges in supply, costs, and feedstock, analysts say.
Last year, Willie Walsh, Director General at the IATA, said that the airline industry would be ready to embrace the fact that SAF would always be more expensive than oil-based jet fuel.
Last month, the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) said that a regional aircraft and a passenger aircraft successfully completed their first demonstration flights with SAF.
"So far, a number of Chinese airlines have conducted commercial test flights using China-made SAF, with a dozen domestic enterprises and institutes working on the research, development and production of SAF," COMAC said.
The SAF made by COMAC was granted airworthiness approval by the Civil Aviation Administration of China in February this year, the company added.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More
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