The UK would have to give up half its farmland to make enough alternative aviation fuel to meet its net zero ambitions, according to a new report from the Royal Society.
The UK has committed to scaling up manufacturing of “sustainable aviation fuels” (SAFs) and make domestic flying “net zero” by 2040. At its current rate, passenger demand is expected to grow by 65 percent by 2025 without any further airport expansions.
Scientists found that energy crops such as rapeseed, miscanthus, and poplar wood, would require more than 50 percent of the UK’s available agricultural land in order to replace aviation fuels.
The report added that producing sufficient green hydrogen fuel would require 2.4 to 3.4 times the UK’s 2020 renewable, meaning wind and solar, electricity generation.
It noted that alternative aviation fuels will likely have an increased cost. Furthermore, traditional kerosene jet fuel is likely to become increasingly expensive as decarbonisation in other sectors accelerates.
The authors added that the UK is “highly reliant” on importing raw material for biofuel, known as feedstocks, with 423 million litres of used cooking oil imported from China alone in 2021.
“Research and innovation are vital tools for the delivery of net zero,” said Graham Hutchings, a professor of chemistry at Cardiff University who chaired the report’s working group.
“But we need to be very clear about the strengths, limitations, and challenges that must be addressed and overcome if we are to scale up the required new technologies in a few short decades,” he added.
The government is relying on the development of alternative green fuels to continue growth in aviation and to allow passengers “guilt-free travel.”
Hutchings said: “The requirements for an alternative to jet fuel, to kerosene, is energy density has to be sufficient to sustain short and long haul flights, it must be produced globally at scale, it must be cost-competitive, and it must be implementable by 2050.”
Net Zero ‘Collides with Reality’
“This is one of those cases where the rhetoric of net zero collides with the reality of the way we live our lives,” Andy Mayer, energy analyst at the free market think-tank Institute of Economic Affairs, told The Epoch Times.But he added that it is more likely that governments will accept aviation as “one of the last dominoes to fall in the fossil fuel industry.”
Mayer said that carbon credits and offsets where airlines can buy permits to fund sustainable rainforest regeneration in South America, for example, is “not a serious solution to anything.”
“Longer term, if you wanted to continue burning fossil fuels and stay within a net zero framework, whatever the date you attach to that, you would have to be putting the carbon back into the ground, either through carbon capture and storage or other technologies that are not yet available,” he said.
Mayer added that while biomass production has been possible for decades, the problem is scaling.
“You'd have to have a Maoist revolution where you collectivise farmland and turn it into biomass of the order of the state and that doesn’t seem very likely in a free country,” he said.
The UK has legally binding targets of reaching net zero by 2050, including government plans to radically reduce carbon emissions by 2030, by phasing out petrol and diesel cars, gas boilers, and by changing people’s diets.
In regard to consumers facing massive changes to choice, Mayer said that the “constraint of your consumer choice is limited by the ability of the government doing it to win elections.”
“At the moment, we’ve got a fair degree of consensus in Parliament on the importance of net zero, but that’s because they’re not really having to face any hard choices,” he said.
He is sceptical that a government will be elected if it says it will ban driving, stop the poor from flying, make people eat only certain foods, and reduce meat because that uses up more land.
“It’s essentially a manifesto for misery,” he said.
In response to the Royal Society report, a spokesperson from the Department for Transport said: “The UK’s Sustainable Aviation Fuels programme is one of the most comprehensive in the world.
“Our Jet Zero Strategy sets out how we can achieve net zero emissions from UK aviation by 2050, without directly limiting demand for aviation. Sustainable aviation fuels and hydrogen are key elements of this, and we will ensure that there is no impact on food crops.”
