McKinsey Quarterly 2023 Number 1

Outlook

Aviation fuel 2.0 Fuel efficiency can take aviation only so far. The industry also needs to ramp up alternative-fuel production.

S their high cost and complexity, but a scale-up is under way. Over the next decades, SAFs will play a key role in decarbonization. s SAFs broadly consists of two categories. One is derived from biomass that is grown or harvested from other processes, including hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids (HEFA) and other biofuels. The other, the power-to-liquid process, starts with hydrogen that is combined with carbon—from direct air capture or from industry off gases— to synthesize fuel. Abundant green electricity AFs have the potential to reduce net emissions by as much as 70 to 100 percent versus fossil fuels. SAFs are in limited use today because of

would be needed for this, and direct air capture of carbon is far from industrial scale at this point, so challenges remain. All scenarios for achieving emissions reductions depend on building hundreds of plants to produce SAFs. Given project lead times of about five to six years, the project planning required to supply the 2030 demand level is feasible but needs to start now.

This outlook is derived from eight articles, reports, and blog posts about aviation published in the past year on McKinsey.com.

McKinsey Quarterly 2023 Number 1

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