"Fuel is strategic" says aviation expert at ITB; biofuels are key to "thinking out of the box"

In Germany, Dr. Jurgen Ringbeck, Senior Partner of Booz & Co said “Fuel is strategic, and there is an argument that can be made that an energy monopoly will be dominating the aviation industry.” Dr. Ringbeck was speaking at ITB, the leading travel trade conference, which scheduled a special focus day on aviation and sustainability. “Fuel expenses and carbon is of extreme economic importance and the aviation industry will have to deal with it, and we have to think out of the box.”

Dr. Ringbeck said that aviation industry projections call for aviation to grow to 51 percent of all travel-related carbon emissions by 2035 under “business as usual” conditions, up from 43 percent today; describing the 2020 aviation 1.5 percent emission decrease goal “as not ambitious,” he said that the industry’s  reduction target of 50 percent by 2050 was “very, very ambitious” and said that it will call for “completely different aircraft and very different fuels.” He described the European Emissions Trading Scheme as valuable, but said that the 7.8 billion euro projected impact by 2020 placed an additional cost burden that would wipe out profitability in aviation and could only be accomplished with radical changes in aviation systems or nationalization of airlines to pay for the charges.

He detailed progress with biofuels but said that that, despite expected ICAO fuel certification by no later than 2012, biofuels were not currently cost competitive.

In addition, Ringbeck called for a “a common voice for global aviation, and a masterplan,” to prevent the emergence of regional or national policies that undermined open aviation skies and penalized individual carriers, adding that IATA should take leadership and get proactive. “The longer we wait there will be more national initiatives, and very difficult to turn these around,” he said. A free download of Dr. Ringbeck’s presentation is available here.

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Tags: aviation biofuels

Category: International