Demand for Sustainable Aviation Fuel on the rise

• Lufthansa Group sees growing interest in Sustainable Aviation Fuel for CO₂-neutral business travel
• Lufthansa Group proactively acquires Sustainable Aviation Fuel for 250 million US-Dollars and joins SBTi initiative
• Management consultancy Kearney is new business customer in “Compensaid Corporate Program”

CO₂-neutral flying is already possible today. The Lufthansa Group is pursuing an ambitious path for more climate friendly aviation and, since spring 2021, in addition to private travelers, has also been offering companies the option of using Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) for their flights. Steadily more of the Lufthansa Group’s corporate customers are interested in this climate friendly form of business travel or freight transportation. After the insurance company AXA Deutschland, the logistics service providers DB Schenker and Kuehne+Nagel, Kearney has now also become the first internationally active management consultancy to invest extensively in SAF. As a result, Kearney is now using the Lufthansa Group’s “Compensaid Corporate Program” to make the majority of its business flights CO₂-neutral.

“As Europe’s largest purchaser of Sustainable Aviation Fuel, we already enable CO₂-neutral flying. Among our corporate customers, we are seeing increasing interest in using this genuine alternative to fossil aviation fuel. Every company that already invests in Sustainable Aviation Fuel spurs the market ramp-up and thus makes an important contribution on the way to CO₂-neutral air transport,” says Christina Foerster, Member of the Lufthansa Group’s Executive Board responsible for Customer, IT & Corporate Responsibility.

Lufthansa Group continues to invest in Sustainable Aviation Fuel

A few days ago, the Lufthansa Group secured sustainable kerosene for a quarter of a billion US-Dollars in order to be able to meet the foreseeable increase in demand in the coming years. This is the largest pure sustainability investment in the history of the Lufthansa Group to date.

Sustainable Aviation Fuel is currently produced mainly from biogenic residues, for example from used cooking oils. This means that the new aviation fuel can, in perspective, enable nearly CO₂-neutral aviation. The Lufthansa Group has been involved in SAF research for many years and has built up an extensive network of partnerships. The company is already the largest buyer of SAF in Europe, a pilot customer of the first industrially produced Power-to-Liquid fuel worldwide, and also aims to be among the world’s leading airline groups in the use of sustainable kerosene.

Currently, very little SAF is available on the global market and it is significantly more expensive than conventional kerosene. The Lufthansa Group is therefore working on various projects to advance the development and availability of SAF including, in particular, SAF produced from renewable electrical energy. In addition to the use of more efficient, latest-generation aircraft, SAF are the most effective lever on the path to a CO₂-neutral aviation industry.

Lufthansa Group joins SBTi initiative

The Lufthansa Group has set ambitious climate protection goals and aims to halve net CO₂ emissions by 2030 compared to 2019 and to achieve a neutral CO₂ balance by 2050. To further specify these net targets, it has joined the so-called Science Based Target Initiative (SBTi) to bring its CO₂ reduction path in line with the United Nations Paris Climate Agreement. Based on scientific calculations, CO₂ emissions will be continuously reduced with the help of fleet renewal and optimization, improved operational efficiency and the use of SAF. The official validation will take place in 2022.