A French Solution To A Global Problem

The recent CAPA event in Budapest attracted the usual crowd of airline leaders explaining why their strategies were better than others and outlining future plans for development. All very exciting stuff but I left the two-day event with one abiding memory and surprisingly it wasn’t how cheap the location was for a future weekend break! And that memory was all about fuel, and specifically Sustainable Aviation Fuel or SAF.

I’ve always doubted the ambitious targets that the industry has set itself but having listened to one discussion the scale and madness of the challenge just seems well, impossible. Apparently in France there is now a requirement for 2% of fuel tankered to include SAF and yet the whole available supply of SAF has been purchased by one locally based airline. No prizes for guessing who that airline is! It’s a crazy situation and made worse when failure to comply results in a penalty to the airline concerned.

In some ways it’s good to see a country taking some proactive steps on the issue of sustainability and carbon emissions but such steps have to be available for all otherwise surely it’s just a piece of showboating and protectionism, and you could never accuse the French of that could you?

-John Grant