The first part of these rules entail that green hydrogen must make up at least 1.2% of aviation fuel by 2030, with the amount of synthetic aviation fuel being gradually increased to 35% by 2050.
This rule has been made with the aim to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions produced from planes by 2050. The steps to make this happen is to ensure that planes departing the EU airports are using increased quantities of bio-based sustainable aviation fuel (SAFs), as well as green hydrogen-based synthetic e-fuels by 2050. Another step that will be taken to ensure this happens is that aviation fuel in Europe will require a 2% blend of bio-SAF beginning from 2025 and increasing to 6% in 2030. From here the concentration of bio-SAF will increase steadily until 2050 when it will be at 70%. Alongside this 1.2% of the fuel given to planes leaving the EU airports will be made from synthetic kerosene in 2030 and 2031. Synthetic kerosene is created through combining green hydrogen with captured carbon dioxide. This process will increase to 2% between 2032 and 2034 and then will increase again to 35% in 2050.
Following this change the EU is now expecting a high demand for aviation fuel at EU airports, with these demands reaching 46 million tons in 2030. This demand will need an estimated 92,000 tons of green hydrogen and 460,000 tons of captured carbon in order to meet this demand.
A further step of including a fine for failing to use the correct blend of fuel has also been introduced, to create incentives for companies to comply with the new aviation fuel rules. The exact amount of the fine has not been decided yet, but it will be announced when the new rules have been finalised and publicised.
The final step to make this plan possible and realistic is that incentives around the benefits that these changes will provide to the aviation sector will be put forwards to encourage airlines to make the change. It has been suggested that these incentives may be funded partly through fines, however the most important part of these incentives is that they highlight the importance of switching and also portray the benefits of these changes to both the aviation sector and the environment.