It’s nothing new: flying pollutes. Airplanes today account for around 2.5% of global emissions, and given that flights could even double by 2040, the situation does not bode well. And no, it won’t be enough to “use the plane less”: we need something that works immediately, without waiting for science fiction technologies.
This is where sustainable aviation fuel comes into the picture, a cleaner fuel that can be made from waste oil, agricultural waste or other waste materials. Too bad that, for now, it represents less than 1% of the fuel used by airplanes in the world: too expensive, too little.
The interesting news comes from new research published on Nature Sustainability and conducted between Tsinghua University and Harvard: there is a much more abundant, much cheaper and much less sexy… but effective source. Municipal waste. Yes, our garbage.
How it works
Municipal solid waste, such as organic waste, paper, dirty plastic, what we throw away every day, often ends up in landfill or burned in incinerators. With terrible results: pollution, waste, stolen land and a vicious circle that is difficult to break.
The Harvard-Tsinghua research analyzed the possibility of transforming these materials into fuel using two existing processes:
It’s not alchemy: it’s applied chemistry. And according to the study’s life cycle assessment, the fuel obtained in this way can reduce the climate impact by 80 to 90% compared to traditional jet fuel. In practice, a clean fuel is obtained that current aircraft can use immediately, without changing engines or infrastructure.
The technical limit today is one:
only 33% of the carbon contained in waste is transformed into fuel.
But scholars indicate two ways to improve efficiency:
And here the “science fiction” idea begins to look a lot like a concrete solution.
What if we turned all the planet’s municipal waste into sustainable aviation fuel
The scenarios developed by scholars are quite clear.
And there’s more: in European Union countries, production from waste would already exceed the “mandatory” quotas of the new rules on sustainable fuels, which will go from 2% in 2025 to 70% by 2050.
From an economic point of view, airlines would also have an advantage: with systems like CORSIA, using sustainable fuel means saving on emissions compensation. And government incentives, already very strong in the United States, further increase convenience.
In short: if we really want to cut emissions from the sector, this approach can work. But (because there is always a “but”) we need governments, energy companies and airlines to move together, and quickly.
As Michael B. McElroy, coordinator of the study, recalls:
This is not a dream. It’s an operational plan. And now that we have it on the table, not using it would be a terrible choice.
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