Targeted Use of SAF at Airports - A Cost-Benefit Perspective

Kurzfassung

In addition to the reduction of CO2 emissions from aviation, non-CO2 effects have recently received considerable attention in the effort to minimize the climate impact of aviation. Sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) have been demonstrated to reduce particles, which are responsible for the formation of contrails, which are the main contributors to non-CO2 effects. However, these non-CO2 effects can vary significantly among individual flights, depending on a range of factors like time of day, season, humidity, altitude, latitude/longitude and aircraft type. Fuel quality also contributes to non-CO2 effects, mainly influenced by its sulphur and aromatics content. The blending mandate in the European Union (EU) under the ReFuelEU Aviation initiative is based on a mass balancing approach, wherein a uniform share of SAF is allocated to all users at an airport. However, given the limited availability of SAF and the uneven distribution of non-CO2 effects among all flights, deviating from this approach maximizes its climate benefits. Therefore, the utilization of jet fuel with a high SAF content is recommended for dedicated flights exhibiting the highest non-CO2 effects. In the EU Horizon Europe research project ALIGHT, researchers from three different DLR institutes have analyzed the impacts of different scenarios of targeted SAF usage for the traffic originating at Copenhagen Airport. In addition to the climate benefits, the challenges of providing two different fuel qualities (fossil jet fuel and a blend with high SAF content) have been analyzed. It has been demonstrated that the use of SAF in flights where non-CO2 effects are predominant can yield net benefits amounting to several million euros per year for the flights departing at the airport of Copenhagen alone, depending upon the selected climate metrics and the assumptions made regarding fuel logistics costs.