Look, up in the sky: It’s a bird, no wait — a flying french fry vat?.The country’s flagship airline is celebrating Earth Day by filling its planes with a biologically produced jet fuel akin to bio-diesel..In a statement Sunday, Air Canada said it had purchased about 9.5 million litres of My Sustainable Aviation Fuel (a trademarked brand name) from Helsinki-based Neste, a company that specializes in renewable fuels and plastics generated from food waste, among other things. The purchase will be facilitated through the San Francisco International airport..It’s not entirely clear why it waited for Sunday morning to announce the move — apart from the fact that it coincides with Earth Day — given that it has been buying the fuel product for more than a year. In its release, AC said SAF is more expensive than traditional jet fuel and remains in limited supply. Its purchase represents almost a third of Neste’s annual output..The 9.5 million litres of SAF will generate greenhouse gas reductions of approximately 23,500 tonnes of CO2 equivalent calculated based on a full lifecycle assessment, which it says is equal to the annual GHG emissions absorbed by 28,000 acres of forest as per the US Environmental Protection Agency equivalencies calculator..According to its website, Neste is currently producing about 34 million litres of SAF per year, a figure it hopes to increase to more than 500 million litres by the end of this year..Air Canada has been buying Neste's SAF since February 2022 and today's announced purchase represents a five-fold increase in its SAF procurement, which it said is an important step towards a 1% target of fuel to be SAF by 2025.. Airbus A330 .Still, it’s barely enough to fuel all its planes for a day. Doing some cocktail napkin math — the kind you’d get on an Airbus 330 which holds about 100,000 litres of fuel — 10 million litres of SAF is enough for about 100 round-trip flights. By comparison, AC averages more than 1,600 flights a day..Canada’s annual GHG emissions rose nearly 2% last year to about 670 megatonnes, which works out to about 75,000 tonnes per hour. Which means AC is offsetting about 15 minutes of the country’s yearly emissions, or barely enough to get off the tarmac at Pearson International..To extend the benefit of the doubt, however, the company did say that SAF will become integral to its long-term emissions reduction plans. Under its Leave Less travel program, corporate customers and cargo freight forwarders can purchase SAF or a combination of offsets to mitigate their own emissions profile under the federal government’s Climate Action Plan.."At Air Canada, we have adopted a multifaceted approach to addressing climate change and sustainability. Environmental and social factors are incorporated into our strategic decisions, as are our fleet purchases and daily operations through our support of low-carbon alternatives. SAF comprises one of our core pillars in pursuing our net-zero emission targets,” AC CEO Michael Rousseau said in a statement.
Look, up in the sky: It’s a bird, no wait — a flying french fry vat?.The country’s flagship airline is celebrating Earth Day by filling its planes with a biologically produced jet fuel akin to bio-diesel..In a statement Sunday, Air Canada said it had purchased about 9.5 million litres of My Sustainable Aviation Fuel (a trademarked brand name) from Helsinki-based Neste, a company that specializes in renewable fuels and plastics generated from food waste, among other things. The purchase will be facilitated through the San Francisco International airport..It’s not entirely clear why it waited for Sunday morning to announce the move — apart from the fact that it coincides with Earth Day — given that it has been buying the fuel product for more than a year. In its release, AC said SAF is more expensive than traditional jet fuel and remains in limited supply. Its purchase represents almost a third of Neste’s annual output..The 9.5 million litres of SAF will generate greenhouse gas reductions of approximately 23,500 tonnes of CO2 equivalent calculated based on a full lifecycle assessment, which it says is equal to the annual GHG emissions absorbed by 28,000 acres of forest as per the US Environmental Protection Agency equivalencies calculator..According to its website, Neste is currently producing about 34 million litres of SAF per year, a figure it hopes to increase to more than 500 million litres by the end of this year..Air Canada has been buying Neste's SAF since February 2022 and today's announced purchase represents a five-fold increase in its SAF procurement, which it said is an important step towards a 1% target of fuel to be SAF by 2025.. Airbus A330 .Still, it’s barely enough to fuel all its planes for a day. Doing some cocktail napkin math — the kind you’d get on an Airbus 330 which holds about 100,000 litres of fuel — 10 million litres of SAF is enough for about 100 round-trip flights. By comparison, AC averages more than 1,600 flights a day..Canada’s annual GHG emissions rose nearly 2% last year to about 670 megatonnes, which works out to about 75,000 tonnes per hour. Which means AC is offsetting about 15 minutes of the country’s yearly emissions, or barely enough to get off the tarmac at Pearson International..To extend the benefit of the doubt, however, the company did say that SAF will become integral to its long-term emissions reduction plans. Under its Leave Less travel program, corporate customers and cargo freight forwarders can purchase SAF or a combination of offsets to mitigate their own emissions profile under the federal government’s Climate Action Plan.."At Air Canada, we have adopted a multifaceted approach to addressing climate change and sustainability. Environmental and social factors are incorporated into our strategic decisions, as are our fleet purchases and daily operations through our support of low-carbon alternatives. SAF comprises one of our core pillars in pursuing our net-zero emission targets,” AC CEO Michael Rousseau said in a statement.
