Here is the second part to that story (which should have gone first but hopefully now makes more sense)…A word was mentioned to me a few months ago which has been bugging me ever since - it now falls into place with the SAF labelling idea.
The word is ‘defossilise’.Once again, many people may know this already, but just in case not, aircraft engines need hydrocarbons in the fuel to provide enough energy to get off the ground – SAF contains hydrocarbons and produces CO2 but it is the source of these hydrocarbons that is different.
The carbon in SAF already existed in the atmosphere in the short-term ‘lifecycle’ of the raw materials – whereas fossil fuel involves drilling for, and unlocking carbon, held underground for millions of years. Key Question: Should we change the language that we use across business travel…Because it may be better to describe any action we take with SAF not as to DECARBONISE travel, but to DEFOSSILISE the fuel that we use.
Same as with E10 Petrol, which removes 10% of the fossil gasoline and replaces it with Ethanol... S10 would remove 10% of the fossil Kerosene and replace it with SAF (which today is largely produced from used cooking oil, waste animal fats, and tomorrow novel vegetable oils and Algae etc).
Sure, we can then talk CO2 reduction. but perhaps we should start by thinking how SAF is able to 'defossilise' air travel - and that any voluntary direct purchase S5 S10 S15 etc. will replace the corresponding amount of fossil fuel and stop the ‘additional’ new CO2 that would have been produced.
I wonder if this is a simpler and more effective way of describing the action we need to take?