rickair7777

SAF prices should come down dramatically with economy-of-scale... it's a boutique niche product right now. Reasonably it should ultimately settle at a cost that resembles the higher historical oil prices, so maybe about double what it costs today. Economically painful for the airlines but we've been there before and it won't be a catastrophe. Especially if the airlines market the price premium to the customers so they understand what they're getting for their money.

rickair7777

EU not happy with IATA scheme to buy offsets...


https://www.reuters.com/article/us-c...-idUSKBN2BA1YL

rickair7777

Possible Biden plan to cut US carbon emissions 50% by 2030. Good news, no mention of aviation yet. Hopefully people understand that will take a little longer.

rickair7777

IAG (BA & Iberia) commits to 10% SAF by 2030...

https://www.reuters.com/business/sus...nt-2021-04-22/

rickair7777

AS shooting for net carbon-zero by 2040...

https://www.businesstravelnews.com/T...ssions-by-2040

rickair7777

German government and aviation industry agree to 30% + SAF use by 2030...

https://www.reuters.com/business/sus...an-2021-05-06/

3EngineTaxi

Crude oil comes from prehistoric plants, right? Which grew presumably by removing carbon dioxide from the air. So burning crude oil is technically carbon neutral, right?

Broccoli Rob

Based on what I've seen aviation only accounts for something like 2-4% of global emissions (someone can correct me if they have an updated number), so it makes sense that cutting emissions by 50% would have to focus first on cars and powerplants. I'd be surprised if the focus was shifted to aviation before those other two things were taken care of first.

rickair7777

I agree. It would make sense to focus on the low-hanging fruit that's easier to fix and not screw up a major economic engine.

But the Gretas seem to have fixated on aviation as a big, loud, highly visible poster child for carbon excess. Naturally a non-trivial number of sheeple will take advice on the future of the global economy and humanity in general from a spectrum teenager.

And apparently, the extremists have also concluded that travel in general is bad... unjust, non-equitable, etc, etc. I don't know how they reconcile that with the fact that large numbers of people in the less-developed world depend on tourism for their economic existence but I guess sacrifices have to be made to achieve global socialist utopia. By their lights, we should all just stay home, tend our gardens, and monitor our iphones for direction from those who know better.

rickair7777

In the grand history of the universe, yes.

But today, that carbon has been locked up underground for millions of years so it's plausible that releasing a whole lot of it all at once could upset the current balance. It's believed there was more CO2 in the air ages ago, and atmospheric gas concentrations do change over time due to various natural factors including volcanic activity. We might not want to live in the climate the dinosaurs enjoyed... they had a LOT more CO2 and also IIRC twice the O2 in their air. The high O2 concentration probably helped them grow bigger than modern land animals. A very high CO2 concentration would be problematic for breathing for modern animals, including us.

One carbon reduction scheme, carbon capture, involves capturing atmospheric CO2, expending energy to return it to a stable, solid form, and then burying it. If things actually get bad, and they want to get serious about carbon, nuclear-powered carbon-capture plants would be an obvious measure.