Low-cost airline Ryanair has signed an agreement with Shell to supply more sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). The oil and gas group will help make SAF more available to the Irish carrier’s fleet at 200 European airports. This mainly concerns Ryanair’s largest bases in Dublin and London Stansted.

Ryanair has already partnered with Neste, the world’s leading SAF supplier, to power plus-minus a third of its flights at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol with a 40% SAF blend.

Carbon neutral by 2050

The agreement with Shell gives Ryanair potential access to 360 000 tons of SAF between 2025 and 2030. This could save around 900 000 tons of CO2 emissions, which the airline says is equivalent to more than 70 000 flights from Dublin to Milan.

According to data from the EU emissions trading system, Ryanair was Europe’s 7th biggest carbon polluter in 2019. On top of that, its CEO Michael O’Leary has been outspoken about climate change, and not in a positive way.

Fuel efficient

Yet the company markets itself as one of the greenest and cleanest airlines in Europe and claims that its CO2 emissions per passenger/km are already the lowest of any major EU airline. In March of this year, Ryanair also announced its decarbonization strategy – Pathway to Net Zero. The goal of this strategy is to get become carbon neutral by 2050.

By 2030, it wants to power 12,5% of its flights with SAF, together with the 22-billion-dollar investments in 210 new Boeing 737 8-200 ‘Gamechanger’ aircraft, which are 16% more fuel efficient. Many critics are skeptical of these plans because Ryanair aims to grow its annual traffic from 149 million passengers to 225 million passengers in the next five years.

SAF pushed by EU

The EU also has set up a roadmap to fly on SAF. By 2025, all airports in the EU should be able to fuel airplanes with a mixture of 2% SAF added to the kerosine, up to 5% in 2030, 37% in 2040, and 85% in 2050. The aim is to cut emissions by 55% by 2030 and to have net neutrality by 2050.

SAFs are produced from biomass or recycled carbon. They can indeed make an important contribution to greening aviation. Critics, however, argue that combustion still releases CO2, although to a lesser extent than regular paraffin.

Currently, SAF accounts for only a small part of global aviation fuel consumption. SAF is thus currently blended with paraffin.