The Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) will establish a S$50 million ($37m) investment fund to support new programmes or initiatives that progress the nation’s ambitions to become a sustainable air transport hub. The Aviation Sustainability Programme will provide selected applicants with funding towards delivering measures that help to reduce aviation’s carbon emissions, build sustainable operational capabilities or unite industry partners to help create a sustainable aviation ecosystem. Sector-wide projects will be subsidised by as much as 70% and company-level projects by up to 50% as part of Singapore’s development of a Sustainable Aviation Blueprint, which is due to be released later this year. The investment programme coincides with an assessment by the flag carrier of neighbouring Malaysia that South-East Asian nations will substantially expand the production of sustainable aviation fuels from 2025 to narrow the current large gap in decarbonisation capabilities between Asia-Pacific markets and both the US and Europe.  

Singapore is growing its capabilities to decarbonise aviation not only to reduce harmful emissions from the sector but also to leverage new low-or-no-emission initiatives for competitive gain as it seeks to strengthen its position as a regional aviation hub. In September last year, an International Advisory Panel (IAP) on Sustainable Air Hub submitted to the CAAS a detailed report containing 15 initiatives to help decarbonise airline, airport and air traffic management operations. The final report will list medium-term targets to 2030 and longer-term measures to 2050, along with enabling pathways.   

“Coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic, we want to build sustainability as a new competitive advantage for the Singapore Air Hub,” said Han Kok Juan, Director General of CAAS. “The new $50 million programme is a response to industry feedback and will provide a much-needed boost to our effort to decarbonise. It will help alleviate investment costs and catalyse and accelerate company-level projects. It will also facilitate sector-wide risk pooling, capability building and collaboration, which will be how we can distinguish ourselves from other air hubs.”

In 2019, said CAAS, operations at Singapore’s airports created 297.5 ktCO2, or around 0.7% of the country’s domestic carbon emissions, while air operators accounted for 17.6 MtCO2, a 2.8% share of all carbon emissions from international aviation.

Singapore’s primary gateway, Changi Airport, is already engaged with partners including Singapore Airlines and its low-cost brand Scoot, Exxon Mobil, renewable fuels producer Neste and state investment company Temasek in a trial of sustainable aviation fuels. It is also investigating other initiatives including the production and supply of hydrogen fuels for future generations of aircraft. As well, CAAS has signed aviation accords with New Zealand, the US, the UK, and Japan which include collaboration on measures that can help to decarbonise air transport between those markets and Singapore. The Singapore government has also signed an agreement with ICAO through which Singapore will provide and receive assistance, capacity building and training (ACT) as part of ICAO’s ACT-SAF programme.

There are three key conditions for participation in the new Aviation Sustainability Programme. For applicants to qualify, they must meet at least one of the criteria – reduce energy use and demonstrate a reduction of at least 10% in carbon emissions; develop and test new service offerings that enhance the ability of companies to operate more sustainably; or bring together aviation ecosystem partners for R&D, green certification or standards development, and foster knowledge transfer.

Examples cited by CAAS of eligible proposals include the adoption of novel or more energy-efficient airport systems or equipment, more efficient and sustainable airport processes such as faster aircraft turnaround times or improved airside vehicle operations, and testing cleaner energy sources such as new alternative or low carbon fuels. CAAS will conduct its first call for proposals in April, with information available to applicants by email.

In neighbouring Malaysia, a senior executive of Malaysia Aviation Group said South-East Asian nations lagged other more developed markets in SAF production “by about a decade,” but would rapidly catch up from 2025.

Philip See, the company’s Group Chief Sustainability Officer and CEO Loyalty and Travel Solutions, told GreenAir that in their second full year of a formal sustainability programme, Malaysia Airlines and its sibling companies – Malaysia Airlines Cargo and regional subsidiary Firefly –  had performed 18 international, regional and domestic flights using SAF. 

“Last year, our SAF flights were a bit ad hoc to gauge customer comfort with the concept,” he said. “We want to move away from one-off SAF flights and beyond one-year to multi-year agreements. Our goal now is to build our operational depth of experience.

“We want to progress to something more structured and to start looking at issues such as procurement and SAF supply chain. We also have to address the local feedstock challenges we have in the region, but it’s not going to be done in the immediate term of one to two years.

“My view is that we are behind the US and Europe by about a decade but if we mobilise, we can narrow that gap relatively quickly. ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) has a lot more work to do but we are very fast adopters. Asian SAF production will begin to take root beyond 2025 in my estimation.”   

See said the pace of SAF scale-up in the ASEAN region would be driven by government policies in member nations, particularly if blending mandates were applied. He also acknowledged the establishment by renewable fuels company Neste of a major SAF production facility in Singapore and said a key benefit in Asia would be logistics. But, he added, “there must still be SAF availability.”

Malaysia Airlines has worked closely with the Malaysian global energy company Petronas to procure blended SAF, but increasingly will work with other partners to source the fuel internationally. As part of the oneworld global airline alliance, Malaysia Airlines is bound by the goal of the alliance that by 2030, 10% of the jet fuel used by its member airlines will be blended SAF. In addition to its growing commitment to SAF, Malaysia Airlines has introduced a range of operational initiatives to help reduce carbon emissions from its flight and ground operations. The airline is also preparing to introduce 20 new Airbus A330-200 neo jets and 25 Boeing 737 MAX narrowbodies, which respectively are up to 11% and 14% more fuel efficient than the older versions they will replace. 

Top photo: Singapore Changi Airport

Bottom photo: In December 2021, Malaysia Airlines, in partnership with Petronas and Neste, operated its first SAF flight

Last week’s Singapore Airshow reflected a growing focus of the air transport sector on decarbonisation across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. Impacted by the recent eruption of Covid’s Omicron variant and onerously imposed government restrictions, the show attracted just 13,000 registered visitors, less than half the 30,000 who attended in 2019, while the number of exhibitors fell by over a third. Although there was a handful of orders for narrowbody passenger aircraft and widebody freighters, many announcements focused on sustainability partnerships and initiatives by airlines, aerospace manufacturers and fuel companies. A significant number of the declarations made at the show underscored the commitment of host nation Singapore to become a sustainable aviation hub and an APAC decarbonisation leader through measures including sustainable aviation fuels, hydrogen propulsion and the use of renewable energy on the ground, reports Tony Harrington.

To guide the strategy, the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) said it will produce a Singapore Sustainable Air Hub Blueprint by early 2023 and has established a 20-member International advisory panel of industry and technology leaders to develop and progress the plan. Their first meeting was held on the sidelines of the show.

“While the immediate focus of the Singapore air hub is to revive air travel, we cannot lose sight of the longer-term challenge of climate change,” said Singapore’s Minister for Transport and Minister-in-charge of Trade Relations, S. Iswaran. “This is a challenging endeavour, especially at a time when aviation companies are still dealing with the effects of the pandemic,” he said. “It will require strong public-private partnership and cross-sectoral collaboration to innovate and reinvent the aviation ecosystem.”

In the days before the air show, a 12-month pilot programme was announced by CAAS, Singapore Airlines (SIA), Exxon Mobil, waste-to-fuel producer Neste and state investment company Temasek to assess the supply, distribution and use of sustainable aviation fuels at Singapore’s Changi Airport.

During the event, SIA – together with aerospace companies Airbus, Rolls-Royce and Safran, plus the support of aerospace sustainability consultancy Roland Berger – signed the Global Sustainable Aviation Fuel Declaration, an initiative urging airlines, aerospace suppliers and fuel partners to support accelerated development, production and use of SAF. SIA was the first airline to sign, underscoring its commitment to decarbonisation, said Lee Wen Fen, the airline’s SVP Corporate Planning. “Beyond SAF, we also use multiple levers to achieve our goals, including achieving higher operational efficiency and investing in new-generation aircraft.” 

The declaration notes that to achieve a net zero target for global aviation by 2050, it is likely a production capacity in the order of 500 million tonnes of SAF would be required. “Recognising that aviation operates within a complex framework of international regulatory and safety requirements, a large-scale uptake of SAFs will require a collaborative effort from a broad range of organisations, with each playing a different role, from research, to production and logistics, to utilisation,” it says. “We will need to work progressively towards the expansion of SAF globally and regionally, with the intention of maintaining a level playing field.”

Grazia Vittadini, Chief Technology and Strategy Officer, Rolls-Royce, added: “It is important that we combine our efforts and focus into building the momentum required to drive this forward. We are all big advocates for the development of alternative propulsion solutions including hydrogen, hybrid-electric and electric, and we also recognise that SAFs are a key building block to set us on our path towards achieving our long-term decarbonisation goals.” Airbus Chief Technical Officer Sabine Klauke urged other key aviation stakeholders to also sign the declaration. “The challenge is to further increase and encourage the uptake of SAF globally, as well as incentives and long-term policies that encourage SAF use,” she said.

Oil company Shell announced at the show that it would become the first supplier of SAF to operators in Singapore, following the upgrading of its local facility to enable blending of sustainable product with conventional aviation fuel, sourced by Shell Aviation from Neste. The first batch will be blended in Europe, before the task is transferred to Singapore. “Alongside investing in our capabilities to produce SAF, we are also focused on developing the regional infrastructure needed to get the fuel to our customers at their key locations,” said Jan Toschka, Global President, Shell Aviation. To support its aim of globally producing some two million tonnes of SAF per year by 2025, and subject to a final investment decision, Shell has proposed a biofuels facility within its Energy and Chemicals Park in Singapore, with annual capacity to produce 550,000 tonnes of low carbon fuels including SAF.

At its Singapore facility, SIA Engineering Company (SIAEC) has just completed a trial of SAF in a Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine, which is used to power Airbus A380 aircraft. Conducted with Singapore Aero Engine Services (SAESL), a joint venture of SIAEC and Rolls-Royce, the trial used a 38% blend of SAF, producing 32% lower carbon emissions than conventional fossil jet fuel. “As SIAEC grows its engine services business, we recognise the importance of mitigating potential impact to the environment,” said the company’s CEO, Ng Chin Hwee. “The successful trial using blended SAF at our engine test facility marks SIAEC’s capability and readiness to support the aviation industry towards the net zero carbon emissions goal.”

Dominic Horwood, Services Director of Civil Aerospace, Rolls-Royce, said the SAF engine test was “an important milestone in accelerating the adoption of SAF in MRO services across the Asia-Pacific region, enabling our partners and customers in the transition to low carbon aviation.”

Neste and Japanese industrial partner Itochu Corporation announced plans to increase the availability of SAF in Japan by expanding a partnership they formed in 2020, through which Neste delivered its first SAF into Asia. Under the expanded agreement, Itochu will distribute Neste SAF in Japan, initially at the nation’s two largest international airports, Narita and Haneda in Tokyo. Neste is expanding its Singapore refinery, which it expects to increase SAF production from 100,000 tonnes to up to 1 million tonnes a year by the end of Q1 2023. 

Hydrogen propulsion also featured at the Singapore show. Beyond the SAF developments, CAAS, Changi Airport Group (CAG), Airbus and the energy engineering company Linde, announced a joint two-year study into developing an aviation hydrogen hub in Singapore. The partners will explore the transportation and storage of hydrogen, and its delivery to aircraft at existing and future airports. “While our immediate focus is on sustainable aviation fuel, we also need to explore longer-term alternatives such as hydrogen to better understand the potential and seize opportunities,” explained CAAS Director General Han Kok Juan.

In the lead up to the air show, Airbus partnered with Korean Air, Seoul’s Incheon international airport, and French industrial gases corporation Air Liquide to explore opportunities and infrastructure requirements for hydrogen powered regional flights in South Korea. “The Asia-Pacific region will play a key role as we work towards making climate-neutral aviation a reality,” said Sabine Klauke of Airbus. “By partnering with Changi Airport and with Incheon Airport, Airbus will leverage the operational and technical expertise of two of the world’s leading hubs. The studies we will carry out together reflect the need for a cross-sectoral approach, including manufacturers, airlines, regulators, airports, energy providers and academia. We need bold and coordinated action to achieve our goals.”   

For the first time in Asia, Boeing demonstrated its new 777X widebody jet, for which Singapore Airlines is an early customer. The airline announced at the show orders valued at $2.8 billion for 22 GE9X engines to power the 777X, which Boeing claims will deliver 10% lower fuel use and emissions than its competitors.

Embraer, Rolls Royce, and Norwegian regional operator Widerøe announced a 12-month partnership to study “a conceptual zero emission aircraft”, examining new propulsion technologies including all-electric, hydrogen fuel cell, and hydrogen-fuelled gas turbine powerplants.

“Technological innovations can potentially enable clean and renewable energy to power a new era of regional aviation,” said Arjan Meijer, CEO of Embraer Commercial Aviation. “The aim of our collaboration is to create new flight solutions that serve expanded market segments in a sustainable manner. I strongly believe this could lead to full sustainable connectivity, including very short haul intercity operations.”

Added Andreas Aks, CEO of Widerøe Zero, the air mobility incubator subsidiary of Widerøe: “Working with the world’s leading aerospace technology firms, our aim is to understand how a viable business can be built around zero emissions regional concepts, and to advise the manufacturers on operational requirements and customer expectations to design the best possible and sustainable air mobility service.”

Photo (Airbus): Static display at Singapore Airshow