Decarbonisation and carbon neutrality by using sustainable aviation fuels? : a business case for Lufthansa

• Autor(a) principal: Schmidt, Laurin
• Data de Publicação: 2024
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/44775
• topic: Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF); Lufthansa; Decarbonisation; Fleet renewal; Aviation; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

Sustainable Aviation Fuel is one of the key technologies to reach the goal of carbon neutrality in aviation. With the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement and the European Green Deal many countries have committed to reduce global warming below 2 degrees and taking efforts to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels. Within a short timeframe until 2050, the aviation industry has committed itself to reach carbon neutrality by using different pathways and technologies. Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) is mentioned as one of the key technologies to reach the goal of carbon neutrality in aviation. Because SAF is not yet commercially used and there are many uncertainties about the effectiveness and availability of this technology, this paper will evaluate the effectiveness of SAF for one of the biggest airlines in Europe – Lufthansa. To do so multiple demand growth scenarios are evaluated and used to predict the future aviation market. In addition, multiple scenarios of SAF penetration rates and fleet change scenarios are considered to assess the possible CO2 reduction with the available technologies. This paper concludes that by only relying on SAF it is not possible to reach the goal of carbon neutrality for Lufthansa. Even when including fleet renewals, the airline would only be able to reduce their total emissions by 68.14% in the best case by 2050. Lufthansa must improve and rely also on other technologies like carbon offsetting and improving operations to come closer to the goal of carbon neutrality in 2050.