Can Lower Carbon Aviation Fuels (LCAF) really complement Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) towards EU aviation decarbonization?

The present work provides an analysis of the potential impact of fossil-based Low Carbon Avia-tion Fuels (LCAF) for the European aviation sector, with a time horizon to 2050. LCAF are crude-derived alternative to kerosene, offering some GreenHouse Gas (GHG) savings, and have been defined by ICAO as eligible fuels for mitigating the environmental impact of aviation. A methodological framework to evaluate the EU technical potential for LCAF production is de-veloped, based on data on crude utilization for jet fuel production in EU refineries, relevant carbon intensity reduction technologies, market prices and fuel volumes. Two different base-lines for fossil-derived kerosene carbon intensity (CI) are considered: a global figure of 89 gCO2e/MJ and an EU-27-specific one of 93.1 gCO2eq/MJ. Three scenarios considering increasing lev-els of CI reduction are then defined, taking into account the current and potential commercial availability of some of the most relevant carbon intensity reduction technologies. This analysis demonstrated that, even if LCAF could offer GHG saving opportunities, their possible impact - especially when compared to the ambition level set in the most recent European legislative proposals - is very limited in most of the analysed scenarios, with the exception of the most am-bitious ones. At 2030, a non-zero technical potential is projected only in the higher ambition scenario, ranging between 1.8% and 14.2%, depending on the considered Baseline for CI. At 2050, almost all considered scenarios project a larger technical potential, ranging between 6.9% and 22.2% for the global Baseline, and between 1.8% and 16.2% for the EU-27 Baseline. LCAF addi-tional costs to current production costs are also discussed, given their relevance in large scale deployment of these technologies and are projected to range between 39 and 46.8 USD/toe.

CHIARAMONTI David;  TALLURI Giacomo;  VOURLIOTAKIS George;  TESTA Lorenzo;  PRUSSI Matteo;  SCARLAT Nicolae; 

2021-10-19

MDPI

JRC126328

1996-1073 (online),   

https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/19/6430,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC126328,   

10.3390/en14196430 (online),