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MatMatt Finch says: ‘If aviation had got its act together 15 ears ago, it would have the enewable-fuel capacity now’


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Aviation’s SAF claims ‘are absolute greenwash’


Environmental campaigner says sector should have acted sooner. Ian Taylor reports


Claims that sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) will substantially reduce the environmental impact of flying are “detached from reality” and “absolute greenwash”. That is according to Matt Finch,


UK policy manager for Brussels-based group Transport & Environment, who argues aviation increasingly “sticks out like a sore thumb” for its failure to act sooner on decarbonisation, having failed “to get its act together” years ago. Finch told Travel Weekly: “SAF


56 4 JANUARY 2024


is portrayed as a global silver bullet. But SAF is 0.1% of aviation fuel. The amount of SAF talked about is so detached from reality. It’s absolute greenwash.” He argued that to produce the


volume of SAF required by airlines, “we would need to turn over 30% of all renewable-fuel capacity to aviation. “But that renewable-fuel capacity


was set up for road transport. If you turn it over to aircraft, less will go to road transport – so as aviation CO2


falls, road CO2 would rise.” Finch suggested: “The same


arguments are playing out in aviation now as in road transport in the late 2000s. Then it was, ‘It’s impossible to decarbonise cars, so let’s decarbonise the fuel’. If aviation had got its act together 15 years ago, it would have the renewable-fuel capacity now.” The EU has set a mandate for 6%


Continued on page 54 travelweekly.co.uk


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PICTURES: Shutterstock/Arseniy Shemyakin Photo; Steve Dunlop


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