Now we give the floor to Ms. Celia Bedoya del Olmo.
She is an aeronautical engineer, the
aeronautical engineering body of the state,
of the General Directorate of Civil Aviation, currently enrolled.
She is an aeronautical engineer, obviously,
for the Polytechnic University of Madrid.
And the subject of her presentation, well,
will be around what is, well, more like,
what, well, I will say it in English because it is written, right?
"Boosting renewable and low-carbon fuels for the aviation sector.
PoliScience challenges in balancing
competitiveness and the green agenda".
That is the title of the presentation and well, go ahead.
Thank you very much, Celia.
Hello, thank you very much, Antonio. I think you can hear me well.
Thanks to the UNED and the OPM for the invitation.
I'm going to start a little bit, taking
up the thread of the previous colleagues,
and I'm going to go back a little bit to see
what the goals are and what the impact is
of the aviation sector and why, in the end, all,
the colleagues have already commented on it,
we are also concluding that the SAF is
the measure that has given me pleasure,
the one that is most viable for decarbonizing
a sector that is very difficult to beat.
And well, a little bit of what I'm going to tell
you, here comes the content of the presentation,
that is the climate impact, the goals that we have
both at a global level and at a European level,
what are the measure baskets, I think
Laura mentioned it a little bit, right?
To decarbonize the sector and the mandates
that we have more specifically of SAF.
And I have focused a lot on the presentation
of what the synthetic SAF is, right?
I have not defined it, I had REVSOL ahead of me, so
I knew that they were going to focus on that topic,
but yes, a little bit of what I wanted to tell
you is what are the challenges that we are finding
at the level of governments, at the level of
both the public sector and the private sector,
to be able to do all that deployment of SAF that is
needed to meet the current mandates that we have.
What is the impact of aviation at a global level?
Well, we have the IPCC, which many of you will know,
estimates that aviation generates 2% of global emissions.
At a European level, more or less, we have
a little bit that the departure flights,
which is a little bit how we measure at a
European level, generate 4% of emissions.
It is a relatively low value, but the problem with the
sector is that it is a very difficult sector to decarbonize.
While other sectors are decarbonizing, we are growing.
And that, well, the projections are that we are
going to be a fairly polluting sector in the
future and that is why they are now trying
to take the whole series of measures.
Below you can't see it, but there are some
projections, a little bit of that traffic growth.
And well, the graph doesn't look good, but how these emissions,
despite the measures that are being
taken, they can't beat all that growth.
There is an interesting issue, for example,
there is also in the figure, you can see it,
I don't know if you can see the level of detail, which is that
very few flights generate that pollution, those emissions.
Almost all of them are focused on international aviation flights.
There is a 6% of flights, it seems, it says that it
pollutes more or less 60%, it produces 60% of emissions.
And an important issue that I wanted to mention is the
issue of the different emissions that the sector generates.
It is not only CO2, but we are also
starting to talk about emissions of non-CO2.
NOx, everything that the engines of the
planes up there generate, even the STELAs.
We are starting to study which ones, well, not
starting, it has been studied for a long time,
although it has no conclusions about the impact of
those STELAs, those formations that occur in the planes.
And if they have, it is estimated that it has a
heating effect, but it is not fully demonstrated.
What are the goals that we have at a global and European level?
Well, as I have already mentioned, just so you know, international
aviation is governed by the International Civil Aviation Organization,
which is based in Montreal. It is an organization that
belongs to the United Nations and has many working groups
and, well, it generates quite, I would not call it
regulatory, but a little bit how the sector is going to work.
There is a group, which is the Environment Group, which
has a lot of associated groups, and in that group,
well, the OASI Assembly, in its penultimate assembly in 2021,
accepted that we were going to have a
goal of being carbon neutral in 2050.
There was subsequently a later
conference, we call it the CAF, the CAF 3,
where all governments agreed, also at a
global level, to reduce emissions by 5%
only with the use of sustainable fuels or low-carbon fuels,
which I still do not know if we have mentioned them, but
they are also not only the AESA, but more traditional fuels,
but which in their production process reduce the use of carbon.
At the European level, we have what is the Green Deal, which was
approved in 2019 and also has that goal of net zero emissions in 2050.
And here there are intermediate goals that are a little more ambitious.
The first is 55% reduction of emissions in 2030.
All this is being tried to maintain.
How can the air sector be decarbonized?
Some colleagues have mentioned it before, but
I wanted to get a little bit to why the CAF,
because we are all focusing on the CAF.
There are a series of measures, and OASI and CAO define
them in that work of the environment that has been done.
The first is all that is technological improvements and advances.
We mentioned the whole part of electric aircraft,
but they have a much greater temporal horizon.
But it is estimated that in 2050 they can start to reduce
12% of emissions for short and medium-range flights.
The issue of operations is another of the
great measures and it is very interesting.
Why? Because in the cruise phase, we were talking about the LTO
cycle, but in the cruise phase 73% of emissions are generated.
Any improvement in efficiency of how the aircraft
move in the airspace will contribute a lot.
And there is an estimate that it can be defined only in the
European space with all that are those operational improvements,
around 10% of the emissions that are made.
What problems, for example, are there?
Conflict issues, there it affects everything.
Right now you can't fly over Russia, higher fuel
costs, nor can you go to the Middle East conflict.
It also generates complexities and then the issue of
operations is quite, at the level of international
aviation, it depends a lot on the condition or
the geopolitical problems that exist.
The fourth measure, although I put it
in the third, are the market measures.
The third would be the CAF, the fuel of
aviation, now we are going to see why.
And the fourth are the programs that we call the market-based programs.
There are two types, more or less, we have two large programs.
One is the European Trading System, it is a trading system and
what it does is define a CAP for the entire aviation sector,
the entire transport sector, and then that CAP has to
be met and the operators can trade with carbon credits
and have polluted more or less, but at
the sector level that CAP has to be met.
On the other hand, we have another global program,
which is Corsia, also dedicated to aviation,
which is led by OACI, which is a program that we call
offsetting, that is, I pollute and buy other carbon credits
to compensate for that pollution, those emissions that I am making.
They are essentially different programs,
but they work in a similar way.
There is a whole anchorage between the two programs in
which we have been working, both the governments and ICAO,
to see what type of flights are covered by
both the European ETS and the Global Corsia.
And Corsia was launched, I think, I am not clear on
the date, I think it has been working since 2021,
but it is still a voluntary program, it is still a voluntary program,
it is still working to make it a global mandatory program.
What are the future projections for aviation?
We have mentioned a little bit this series of projections,
we have many projections in the aviation sector
of how that growth will influence the burning of more fuel.
The planes can be made more efficient with these measuring tanks.
Here you can see on the left what OACI
estimates for what are the reductions.
Here you have a little bit of how those emissions are growing
and then a series of measures of how they can decrease.
Europe has a similar analysis, Laura presented the analysis of
the study of 2050, which is a little more related to industry.
These are two analyses that come more from the
government sector, but you can see that in both cases,
and again the final graph is not visible, the
largest reduction is the one that corresponds to SAV.
I think Europe estimates that it can reach
53% and CAO a little less, 30 and so,
but in both cases, you see here would be the green piece,
the green pieces, so the SAV decreases the emissions,
and in the other case it would be when it goes
from 139 to 73, the use of sustainable fuels.
For all these estimates, it is why the
aviation sector decides, we have all agreed,
that sustainable fuels are the key to the medium-term decarbonization,
a very difficult sector to decarbonize, and we believe
that while the best efficiencies are still being worked on,
the best disruptive aircraft and a series of other
things, the SAV is the solution that we have right now.
I did not want to tell you what the SAV was, I
understood that others were going to present it,
and I wanted to go a little to the mandates.
We have this issue, we have the whole part of Repsol that
has presented us a little how they have been working,
how all the energy companies have been working
on the development of sustainable fuels,
and Europe decides to put a mandate.
This is very interesting because we are going to
see a little bit how other countries have
done it, but Europe decides to put a mandate,
which is the Refuel Aviation Regulation,
which puts a minimum to use for aviation,
both SAV and synthetic SAV fuel.
This minimum is growing, it starts in 2025, again,
it is not seen there, I do not see it here either,
but in 2025, this same year, we start with a 2%
and from there the values start to grow a little,
up to the 2050 values, in which 70% of SAV has to be SAV,
and from there they also start to put a minimum of synthetic fuels.
Within all this great variety of sustainable fuels that
there are, of the different origins that there are,
in Europe they decide to put a minimum
mandate also for synthetic fuels.
2025 does not start, but with synthetic we start in 2030.
And now I am going to tell you a little
bit if we are prepared or not for
2030, in the focus of synthetic fuels.
Much of the bio part are already known routes,
the EFA, which are relatively well developed,
although there are still issues of costs, etc.
, but the synthetic part is still a type of fuel
that has not passed the final investment decisions,
we will see it, and there is a little
bit of the challenge also in Europe.
I did not want to put a little what
is the issue of SAV, it is important,
I did want to mention the issue of non-CO2, what are the emissions,
because as I said, going back to the beginning,
when we talk about what is the impact of aviation,
we talk about CO2 emissions and non-CO2 emissions.
Much of this component of non-CO2 emissions comes
from what is the aromatics and sulfurs of fuels.
It seems, and again, it is still being studied scientifically,
although the sector tends to decide that it is so,
but that sustainable fuels would also
reduce that pollution of non-CO2 emissions.
This is important because non-CO2 is estimated to contribute
up to 50% of what is the climate impact of aviation.
It has a lot of uncertainty because it is not well known,
not all the trade-offs that exist have been studied well,
but it could be understood that SAV is also going to be beneficial
both for CO2 emissions throughout its life cycle,
although it burns like it burns, it burns
like JETAIL, like any aviation product,
but throughout its life cycle it decreases,
but it also has less aromatics, it has less sulfurs,
and that can cause those non-CO2 impacts to decrease,
which is a topic that we are quite interested in.
We have those minimum mandates.
It started in 2024, which has served a bit as proof,
and we are also lucky that a report has just come out on these dates,
which is what tells us what happened with the refuel last year.
We have very clear data on where we are.
To tell you a little bit, more or less,
in 2024 there was no mandate, there was an anti-tank mandate,
which Laura has mentioned, but there was no mandate for the use of SAV.
What are we seeing? We are seeing that the suppliers
are already starting to provide sustainable fuel.
The figure is there, I think I wanted to read it,
because I am interested in seeing the difference between the use,
because it is being used in other systems,
but the execution right now is there.
It has been reported that 32 million tons of
aviation fuel are being given at LAOE airports,
of which only 0.6% is SAV, only, currently.
There was no mandate, but we are at 0.6%.
This is a little bit of what we are
seeing, and that mandate did not apply.
Almost all the reported SAV is BIAEVA,
that biofuel that we mentioned earlier.
And 81% is produced from used cooking oil fuels.
That is a little bit the first image we have of this 2024,
which as I say is like a year of testing to see what is happening.
What do we also see? That there is a completely unequal complement.
There is a little bit of the figure, there
have been reported many of the operators,
almost all of them, 262 out of 351 at the airport
level, only 61% also meets the requirement.
Laura mentioned those three routes that the refuel has,
mandate to the airport, mandate to the
airline, mandate to the fuel supplier.
And then we see a little bit, both the
supplier part, but also the airport part.
So, at the moment we are advancing in a very unequal way in Europe.
There are airports that meet more and airports that meet less.
The operators are buying more, a 0.8%.
Why are they buying more?
Because they are putting it in other systems.
Here is a very interesting issue that I do not
want to go deep into because it is a little bit,
I can take too long and I do not want to extend too much,
which is with the basket measures that I was talking about before,
when the operators use sustainable fuel, they use it
to report to that ETS scheme and that Corsia scheme.
And with that they get discounts, so to speak, we call it allowances.
So, that use of sustainable fuel is
being promoted and financed indirectly,
through these two, well, in Europe through ETS.
And then the operators are given credits,
free credits for which they can be discounted,
and then it is somehow being financed.
What is happening?
Since there is a difference of systems,
we have the ETS system in Europe,
but we have the system in the UK, we have the system in Switzerland,
we have several systems that are a little bit
associated, but that do not converge completely.
There are some systems that give greater
facilities than the European one,
and that fuel is being reported to another country,
although it is used in Europe for that broader
Buchan claim mechanism that other countries have.
This is a problem that at the European
level we are looking at because, well,
we are not reflecting what is being used and we are not
valuing what our operators and our energy providers are doing.
An interesting issue is that another type of…
well, at least it seems to me that it is like Europe,
or how we have been walking towards the promotion of sustainable fuels.
Europe puts a mandate and then wants to generate a market,
a market that is still non-existent, and now we
are going to see what challenges that brings.
Why? The same thing happens with what were the renewables before.
There was no market, nobody knew, there were no costs,
how much is this going to cost me in 20 years? No idea.
So, Europe has taken that line of putting that refuel mandate,
which is giving a lot of security to the sector,
it is doing what? Events like this, right?
We are all very involved in that SAF solution,
but we are working now to see how that mandate
can be materialized without having to postpone it.
On the other hand, other approaches, the
United States does not have a mandate,
there is no minimum, they do not impose a minimum,
but they do give tax incentives to production, at least previously.
I don't know, right now I think everything
is a little bit more complicated.
The United Kingdom makes a combination,
it puts a mandate but at the same time it also gives incentives.
As we say, they, through their ETSD UK,
are basically writing down the note,
and they also have many pilot programs for
production, especially with the synthetic part.
And then, for example, Brazil is a very, very active
country in the whole issue of sustainable fuels,
especially in biofuels, by tradition,
by its palm, by all many types of crops.
They are being very strong and it is also
being said that they will have a mandate,
especially for that part of bio, but they are also
very interested in the other part of synthetic.
Here is where we are, which was a little
bit the question of today's seminar.
Where are we? We have that mandate to fulfill, aviation
sees that it is clearly the solution, and what is happening?
We really don't have any synthetic fuel project right now
that has passed the final decision of investment in Europe.
We talk a lot, we are all seeing what the solution
is, but at the level of synthetic, not of bio,
which as I say is a route that is better known,
although it is still expensive, it is better
known, but right now there is no problem.
What is also interesting, and I think
I have it in the other transparency,
is that Europe has an announced capacity of 40% of the
world's capacity, but we have not really passed anything.
And that is a big concern, in 2030 we have
to start showing that there is that use.
Synthetic plants are very expensive plants, they are huge
investments, they are very complex, very complex technologies,
and they need several years, so we should be
making final investment decisions in
2026, if not, we will not get to 2030.
As I say, the scenarios of capacity for 2030, there
are many studies, this is a study of ASA in particular,
but there are others more or less that estimate the
same, that we could produce between 3.6 million tons,
3.6 to 3.8 million tons, in a realistic scenario.
But we are talking about bio, we are not even getting into synthetic yet.
That is why it is estimated that the main risk is that
of the fulfillment of the mandate of synthetic for 2030,
and again, now we are going to see that we are
trying to work to see how that is reoriented.
What is happening with SAF? We are importing it.
Unfortunately, we see a little bit that many of the raw
materials to make the SAF, even here, come from outside.
There are only 25 suppliers that reported SAF
and less than 10 concentrated 80% of the market.
There is a brutal external dependence.
Sustainable fuels, one of the issues that we
also see for the sector is energy independence,
and competitiveness is an issue that we are seeing right
now, because it is not giving us an answer to that.
And well, as I say, strong dependence on
imports, 40% of the total, right now, of use.
Quite worrying.
What do we see? A little bit also, because
it is very marginal, at a global level 0.
53, at the European level 0.60 of the total use of aviation fuel.
We are advancing, many projects announced, but none that
have started, have passed that final investment decision.
And the European Union, the Commission,
is estimating a need of 100 billion euros, until 2035 only, to produce.
We are talking here about SAF, not bio and elite.
Spain, we see here a little bit, that the company
had also mentioned before, is the price difference.
There is a big part of the problem. At the moment, there are very
few projects, much planned, little done, but it is not known.
And one of the also important issues is how the aviation
sector works, compared to how the energy sector works.
That is, and to try to explain it very, very basically, to be
able to decide if it is invested in a synthetic fuel plant,
and pass that final investment decision, you need, how
are you going to sell, but right now you do not know.
And then, nobody takes that step.
Mechanisms are being seen, an operator also, an air
operator, is not going to make a purchase of synthetic fuel,
for a long period of time. Yes, there is a lot
of movement in the sector, a lot of interest,
and there are airlines, large groups of operators, that
are making commitments, but a commitment is non-binding.
So, nobody buys, nobody sells, and there
we are, like a little bit in the middle.
And with an estimate of prices, which right
now is quite, we mentioned in summary, 3 to 10,
more expensive than normal fuel, and well, it depends on the type.
ISAF, as I say, great announced capacity, there is nothing
we are doing, and instead others are already advancing.
China is pulling, it is always one of the big risks
that we started to see, it already has 10 projects.
The United States, also with its other type of approach, we do not
know if that will stop or not, but well, there they are also advancing.
And in Europe, we are a little bit right now,
seeing what kind of tools we can use to unlock this.
Just to mention, there is a report from an
organization, Transport and Environment,
which has been dedicated only for synthetic HAB, which is very
interesting, and also talks a little bit about that productive capacity,
of the announced projects, and again, I'm sorry, I
don't see it well, but they are almost all in France.
That is also something that at the level
of Spain should be of interest to us,
for a little bit also, all the capacity that in
Spain we could have to be a good synthetic HAB.
There we have a little bit that France leads in
this announced capacity, which is not the real one.
And a topic also to show the interest of the sector,
is a letter that has been made right now in the summer,
from the whole industry, supporting or trying to
ask the European Commission and all governments,
the Member States of the European Union,
to advance exclusively in synthetic HAB.
There is a lot of movement, but little action.
How has the Commission and the Member States responded so far?
We just announced, last week, what is the
Sustainable Transport Investment Plan,
and it has a very clear focus on what
is the production of sustainable fuels.
It gives a roadmap at the European level, of how we can try to improve.
Those are the challenges that are being
seen, that want to advance a little bit,
the issue of uncertainty in income, that is the
first one, I have mentioned it several times,
the high price gap, the insufficient production
capacity without projects on a commercial scale,
that critical need for infrastructure, we will talk later,
I also think, about this dependence on green hydrogen,
and then a little bit, that there is no complete clarity,
versus other systems, of those flexibility mechanisms.
The fellow from Repsol commented on how we count that fuel.
It is very difficult to say that in a
plane you put 3% of sustainable fuel,
and that plane, on that specific flight, is the one that spends it.
There are a lot of flexibility
mechanisms, mass balance, book and claim,
to see a little bit of that traceability, and how operators can
benefit from the allowances they can have for the use of SAR.
I will not go into depth, but the Commission
has launched a whole series of different tools,
of greater or lesser scope, to see how we can advance a little bit
in that increase in the production capacity of sustainable fuels,
with a lot of existing programs, a lot of building,
because they see that short and medium-term challenge.
I did not want to leave, as we are all
seeing a lot of news about the COP30,
also so that you know that there too, the
aviation sector is also represented in Belém,
and there have been several announcements,
all also related to sustainable fuels.
Again, there has been a commitment,
here is a commitment called Belém 4x,
but it is related not only to aviation,
here it is with all means of transport,
but there have also been several countries,
I think it has been Brazil, Japan,
that have also launched a call for the use of sustainable fuels,
and this is coming out right now in the news.
The opportunity of Spain, I have not wanted to
focus much on it, because there are many
studies, because Spain should be a leader in
this, just mention, for example, again,
there have been many publications from the sector, I
think a colleague from Bueling will comment on them,
there has also been the Association for Sustainable Air Transport,
which is also publishing reports on this, the white book,
the Collegium d'Ingénieurs Industriaux, in collaboration with England,
has also published a publication, looking
at all these issues of decarbonization,
and well, more or less, what we always say
is that Spain, due to its low energy
costs, the ExxonMobil network, which is a
pipeline network that serves airports,
and logistically it is very beneficial
for those issues of mass balance,
for many aspects, Spain should be able to lead
the issue of the production of sustainable fuels,
both river and synthetic fuels, not synthetic fuels.
And here we leave it. I don't know if I have extended myself too much.
Cecilia, for all the information you have provided us,
you have come to highlight, of course, the important
effort made by the General Direction of Civil Aviation,
where David studied, and here in our room, which honors Cecilia's visit,
for all the information, all the effort she makes in what is good,
in addressing the issue of SAF within a complex global context.