AIRFRANCE and KLM have signed a new agreement with French energy company TotalEnergies for 800,000 tonnes of sustainable aviation fuel. This is the second order in the past month, following the order for 1.6 million tonnes of sustainable aviation fuel from Neste and DG Fuels. With these agreements, the airline group is almost halfway to achieving its 2030 sustainability target.
AIRFRANCE and KLM have set a target to reduce carbon emissions by using 10 percent sustainable aviation fuel by 2030. In the past month, the airline group has ordered 2.4 million tons of sustainable aviation fuel from various energy companies, of which the latest order of 800,000 tons was placed with France's TotalEnergies. Together with the previous order of 1.6 million tons of sustainable aviation fuel from energy companies Neste and DG Fuels, the group has achieved almost five percent sustainable aviation fuel, which is almost halfway to its sustainability target for 2030.
“With these significant investments, we are making a real difference. AIRFRANCE and KLM are already an industry leader in the use of sustainable aviation fuel, although we still have some way to go before we reach our 2030 sustainability target. This is a major step towards covering our fuel needs, but also towards promoting the production of innovative and sustainable energy alternatives,” says Gijs van Popta, General Manager of AIRFRANCE and KLM North Europe.
The airline group's sustainability goal is twice as ambitious as the EU Commission's
AIRFRANCE and KLM’s sustainability targets exceed the EU Commission’s ReFuelEU legislative proposal, which aims to increase the share of sustainable aviation fuel in Europe to five percent, which is half the size of the airline group’s target within the same timeframe. Unlike ReFuelEU, AIRFRANCE and KLM’s target is also global. In December 2022, it was also announced that the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), a collaboration between global sustainability organizations such as the UN Global Compact and the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), has signed off on the group’s 2030 emissions reduction target being in line with the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global temperature rise to well below 2°C.
AIRFRANCE and KLM have invested in the testing and use of renewable aviation fuels globally for over 15 years. Since 2018, KLM has been involved in the Swedish project “RE-SAF: sustainable aviation fuels”, which is a continuation of the feasibility study ’From wood chips to airplanes in Småland’ funded by the Swedish Energy Agency. The project brings together KLM, Växjö Energi, Södra, RISE, SkyNRG and the 2030 Secretariat to jointly develop the conditions for an integrated production facility for sustainable aviation fuel produced from wood chips, a waste product from forestry.
– We are proud to be part of the RE-SAF project for the development of innovative and sustainable fuel alternatives. The demand for sustainable aviation fuel is high, which we see increasingly among our customers. In Sweden, we collaborate with travel agencies such as Tranås Resebyrå, Travel Support and Gemini Travel to jointly support the sustainable development of the industry, says Martin Kotte, Sales Manager for Sweden at AIRFRANCE and KLM North Europe.
According to the press release.
