To address those concerns, the Biden administration says that it will help cut costs and rapidly scale domestic production of sustainable fuels, but in a climate-friendly way.

That’s not where the state of the science is. “The problematic part is that today’s biofuels don’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions. “Aviation fuels are going to be one of the toughest nuts to crack because electrification isn’t as simple” as electrifying, say, cars, trains or other ground transportation, said Jason Hill, professor of bioproducts and biosystems engineering at the University of Minnesota. Momentum is building for action even in industries like aviation, which are particularly reliant on burning fossil fuels, because powering planes solely with batteries, especially for long-haul flights, is tricky. That year has come and gone, and sustainable fuels are still stuck at far less than 1 percent of supply. The International Air Transport Association, a trade group of the world’s airlines, had pledged to replace 10 percent of the jet fuel it uses with sustainable fuels by 2017. The airline industry has set sustainable fuel targets before. In a deal announced Thursday, the Biden administration and the airline industry agreed to an ambitious goal of replacing all jet fuel with sustainable alternatives by 2050, a target meant to drive down flying’s environmental toll.Īs early as 2030, President Biden said, the United States will aim to produce three billion gallons of sustainable fuel - about 10 percent of current jet fuel use - from waste, plants and other organic matter, reducing aviation’s emissions of planet-warming gases by 20 percent and creating jobs. At first glance, it’s a big step forward in curbing climate change.

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