Planes will soon take to the skies on chip fat, wood waste and algae. That is ten times more expensive than kerosene, but it will also make aviation – a notorious polluter – 85 percent cleaner by 2050. The European Parliament reached an agreement this afternoon after difficult consultations so that it can now start negotiations with the member states.
Electric or hydrogen aircraft would be much better for the climate than the obligatory blending of bio- and synthetic fuels, but the technology is not there yet. In order to quickly make aviation cleaner, Parliament decided to considerably tighten up the original Commission proposal, part of the European climate plans.
From 2025, 2 percent alternative fuel must be added, rising to 37 percent in 2040 (Commission: 32 percent) and 85 percent in 2050 (Commission: 63 percent). To make this higher ambition achievable, Parliament wants to define biofuels more broadly. At least until 2034, residual products from fossil fuels and animal fats may also be used. Forage- and food-based fuels and by-products of palm oil, soy and soap were excluded by Parliament because of unsustainability.
Many airlines also advocated this. People who are starving to death in Africa are not allowed to see food-fired aircraft flying overhead. Nor does Parliament want tropical forests to disappear or good agricultural land to be taken over by kerosene substitutes. “Everyone should be able to fly again without shame,” as Vera Tax (PvdA) put it. “Citizens must be able to continue to fly, but in a responsible manner,” said European Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson.
Huge task
The Commission, Parliament, Member States and the sector itself still have a huge task ahead of them. The alternative fuel must soon be available at all 800 European airports, while there is not yet a single commercial refinery for bio-kerosene. The system, which is by definition susceptible to fraud, must be made safe to use, European airline companies must not suffer a competitive disadvantage (for example by initially compensating them via emission rights and with a fund, fed with fines from offenders) and foreign carriers calling at European airports must also refuel ‘green’. . All of this should therefore be working in three years’ time, while negotiations have yet to start in Brussels.
That these will be difficult is certain, because the Danish liberal Sören Gade, who will soon act as Parliament negotiator, had the greatest difficulty in getting even Parliament to agree. “We are talking about the sector that is the most difficult to decarbonise,” he stated. “But if we don’t choose to fly cleaner, we will stop flying or drop our climate goals.”
Sober conclusion
The latter was certainly not an option after a debate earlier in the day in which Southern European MPs in particular screamed bloody murder about the devastating consequences of the extreme drought, which they linked one-on-one to climate change. Throughout southern Europe, they fulminated, rivers are running dry, crops are lost, people have to protect themselves against temperatures as low as 57 degrees (Sicily) and more and more intense forest fires are burning entire regions to ashes.
Vice-President Maros Sefcovic, who led the debate on behalf of the Commission, acknowledged after an hour of rare unanimity that the situation is ‘serious’ and that ‘if climate change continues like this’, 10 percent of agricultural land will be lost in ten years’ time. Nevertheless, he closed the debate without any concrete measures and the rather sober conclusion: “I understand that you want the Commission to react more quickly.”
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