The United States Should Not Turn Food Into Aviation Fuel
Emissions from domestic aviation are responsible for 3 percent of annual US greenhouse gas output and are expected to increase by 2–3 percent per year through midcentury unless the course is corrected. In contrast, emissions from ground transportation are expected to decline as vehicles become more efficient and are increasingly electrified. Aircraft efficiency is improving, but not fast enough to keep up with increasing air travel. While some short-haul flights can be replaced with high-speed rail and could possibly be electrified in the future, most of the emissions reductions needed from aviation through midcentury will have to be achieved through alternative liquid fuels—also known as sustainable aviation fuel (SAF)—or compensated for through carbon dioxide removal.
Not all alternatives to petroleum jet fuel reduce the environmental impact of air travel, and they often have unwanted side effects. For example, diverting soybeans and corn from food and feed markets to make fuel—currently the leading approaches to producing alternative jet fuel in the United States—harms consumers by driving up food prices and leads to deforestation, biodiversity loss, and emissions from land-use change.
Federal and state support for alternatives to petroleum jet fuel should focus on approaches that avoid the conflict between food and fuel production by using waste biomass, carbon captured from the atmosphere, and clean hydrogen as feedstocks for SAF. Technologies such as biomass gasification, Fischer-Tropsch fuel synthesis, and electrofuels (e-fuels) made from clean hydrogen and captured carbon dioxide are nascent but have the potential to produce truly sustainable aviation fuel.
Key Recommendations:
- Congress should exclude any aviation fuel made from food or feed crops from eligibility for any tax credit extension to avoid driving up food prices and increasing emissions from land-use change.
- California and other states with low-carbon fuel standards should set firm caps on credits from fuel made from food or feed crops and then phase out credit for such fuel. Governments should also adopt new methods for calculating the carbon intensity of fuels that fully account for the impacts of any dedicated use of land for their production.
- Federal and state targets and support for alternatives to petroleum jet fuel should focus on approaches that use waste biomass, carbon captured from the atmosphere, and clean hydrogen as the feedstocks for SAF to avoid the food-versus-fuel conflict. Aviation emissions reduction targets and mandates should allow credits for carbon removed from the atmosphere and permanently sequestered.
Preview image by James Baltz/Unsplash
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