Biofuels for Aviation: Policy Goals and Costs

In most areas of transport, emission reductions (as measured by their marginal abatement costs) are generally expensive. To date surface transport in the EU has benefited from the push effect of renewable transport energy policy. This has led to the development of a biodiesel industry in the EU to meet the demand created by renewable fuel obligations. Biojet fuel has not benefited from this uplift with only one Member State (The Netherlands) acknowledging the option of biojet fuel as a means of contribution to the renewable transport target. This chapter explores biofuels for aviation or biojet fuel as a policy option to reduce emissions. Direct emissions from civil aviation currently account for about 3% of total EU greenhouse gas emissions. Biofuels can help lower the EU's carbon footprint by providing a renewable alternative to jet fuel in airliners. Biofuels emit less CO₂ and contain no sulfur compounds. Our analysis shows that in the absence of action, emissions from EU aviation will grow from 151 million tonnes (Mt) of CO₂ to 405Mt in 2050. This represents a 167% increase on 2005 levels. The additional costs for biojet fuels are between 0.42 and 1.20/L. These costs, if spread across all domestic and intra-EU flights in 2020, would add between 1.20 and 4.30 to the cost per passenger of a typical 1000km flight. This is based on achieving the current EU ambition of 2Mt of biojet fuel production in 2020.