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The European Union has a plan to decarbonize aviation over the coming decades.

The European Union reached a provisional agreement on Tuesday aiming to decarbonize air travel and create a level playing field for sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs).

The ReFuelEU Aviation proposal aims to put Europes air travel industry on a trajectory to meet the E.U.s climate targets for 2030 and 2050. Adina Vlean, the European Commissioner for Transport, called the agreement a turning point for European aviation.

Before becoming law, the agreement must be approved by individual E.U. member countries, but that is viewed as a formality.

Once adopted, the law will require airlines to use fuel that blends sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) with kerosene in progressively larger amounts, beginning at 2% of the total fuel in 2025, rising to 6% by 2030 and to 70% by 2050.

The plan is for the quotas to help spur both the demand for and supply of SAFs, which will in turn bring costs down. Until now, the development of SAFs has been hindered by low supply and prices that are still considerably higher than fossil fuels.

E.U. officials are touting ReFuelEU Aviation as a win-win for both the environment and the economy. Shifting to sustainable aviation fuels will improve our energy security, while reducing reliance on fossil fuel imports, said Vlean. These kinds of measures help make Europe a front-runner in the production of innovative clean fuels, globally. We estimate that the SAF market will create more than 200,000 additional jobs in the EU, mainly in the renewables sector.

Since 2021, the E.U. and U.S. have agreed to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050. But their approaches have been different.

In early September 2021, the Biden administration announced a new sustainable aviation fuel goal to increase the production of SAF to at least three billion gallons per year by 2030.

The plan includes an SAF tax credit and the launch of a new SAF Grand Challenge to ramp up domestic production of SAFs with a roadmap devised holistically by an interagency team that includes the departments of energy, transportation and agriculture as well as stakeholders from national labs, universities, non-governmental organizations, and the aviation, agricultural, and energy industries.

On Wednesday, the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the global airline lobby, expressed reservations about the mandate-driven approach outlined in the European plan. Mandates send a signal to producers and the market and risk a huge increase in cost and a license to print money for fuel suppliers, while raising the price of mobility throughout the E.U., said Conrad Clifford, IATA Deputy Director General.

The Inflation Reduction Act in the United States shows the power of significant incentives in driving production, said Clifford. Without similar firepower being deployed in the E.U., the E.U. faces having to import SAF in order to meet its own targets, increasing costs and diminishing the environmental gains.

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'A Turning Point': The European Union Agrees To Decarbonize Air ... - Forbes