May Events Round-Up
Our Director, Aoife O’Leary, at the Sustainable Skies World Summit in May.
Ahead of June and July’s EU and UK elections, we at the SASHA Coalition Secretariat were eager to find out what the outcomes could mean for aviation and shipping decarbonisation. In that spirit we attended a spree of events to hear what industry and policymakers had on their minds. The two topics that repeatedly came up were decarbonisation and green growth.
Read on to find out more about our key takeaways from the events we were at…
Innovation Zero Conference
We kicked off May by attending the Aviation and Shipping Forum at the Innovation Zero conference. The event came hot on the heels of the Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) Mandate, which was released by the UK government the week before. We heard from industry experts from the Jet Zero Council to the Port of Tyne, with our members Cranfield Aerospace Solutions and ZeroAvia being panellists as well. Our main takeaways were:
Green hydrogen will be important for both the shipping and aviation industries. As it is so expensive right now, we need actors from outside the industry, such as banks driving investment and regulators implementing policy to alleviate risk and ultimately drive down prices.
The UK SAF Mandate is a crucial tool in the decarbonisation of aviation, but there’s room for it to be even more ambitious and match – and even go further than – the EU’s fuel mandate.
We really need cross-departmental collaboration within government to create a more aligned approach to the decarbonisation of these industries – then progress will be quicker.
SASHA Coalition Webinar
A week later, we hosted our own webinar. If you couldn’t to make it, you can watch the recording here. Our panellists from the Aerospace Technology Institute, Cranfield Aerospace Solutions and the UK Chamber of Shipping discussed how decarbonising the aviation and shipping sectors will boost green growth in the UK.
Our five key takeaways were:
There is a clear need for effective industrial and infrastructure policy to set out sensible regulations that give investment confidence across the entire sector in both aviation and shipping.
Our panellists called for greater clarity from government when it comes to the fuels that will help to decarbonise their sectors and spoke about using a merit order to promote the use of green hydrogen.
One of the fundamental challenges highlighted was the source of renewable electricity that isn’t currently available in the national grid.
When it comes to economic competitiveness, the discussion focused on the need for international alignment, especially as both aviation and shipping are incredibly internationally complex and networked.
The opportunities that green hydrogen development can bring for economic and job growth are huge. If the UK develops leading hydrogen-aircraft capability, for example, the UK could up its market share from currently around 13% to 18% of a potential £34 billion industry by 2050.
SAF Supply Chain Initiative
The SAF Supply Chain Initiative was held across 8-9 May. The keynote address was given by Aviation Minister Anthony Browne, who argued that the key to sustainable aviation is SAF, and that the UK needs to develop domestic SAF markets to ensure we are not reliant on imports.
There were also discussions around the reliability of HEFA fuels due to their availability, and the need for the Power-to-Liquid sub-mandate to be even more ambitious.
Sustainable Skies World Summit
In the third week of May, our Director Aoife spoke at a panel on at the Sustainable Skies World Summit. Sitting alongside policymakers from both sides of the Atlantic, Aoife argued that current regulations do not do enough to incentivise the lowest emission fuels – namely green hydrogen and green hydrogen-derived fuels – and reinforced the need for policy to actively support those fuels over other less sustainable alternatives.
SAF Congress
In Amsterdam at Sustainable Aviation Future’s event, which SASHA was a proud partner of, we heard from our member Arcadia eFuels who explained that e-fuel producers need more stakeholders to purchase the e-fuel, which is where governments and banks can step in to help with the high prices of e-fuels. This is especially crucial as Arcadia notes that e-SAF could form at least 50% of all SAF used in 2050.
In sum...
Hearing from experts across the aviation supply chain, one thing is clear: there are plenty of carrots, but not enough sticks. The UK provides encouraging carrots for SAF production in the form of the Hydrogen Allocation Rounds, the upcoming revenue certainty mechanism, and state investment in innovation. And while the SAF Mandate stick exists, it needs to be more ambitious in terms of the Power-to-Liquid sub-mandate, to ensure e-fuels can compete in the market.
We were also pleased to see the UK Government consulting on how best to introduce a revenue certainty mechanism. Such an intervention would give further security to producers facing risk, but we should ensure that the mechanism is truly funded by the aviation industry responsible for the emissions rather than public finances.
Beyond policies and regulations, we also need to see a fundamental shift in how policy is made, with greater cross-collaboration between UK Government departments. Doing so would ensure that there is alignment between aviation and shipping decarbonisation policy, and the energy infrastructure that will support their transition to green hydrogen-derived fuels.
Across these events we saw the shipping and aviation industries moving in the right direction, but, as ever, we need greater ambition to successfully decarbonise these sectors in time to meet Paris climate targets.
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