Qantas under pressure from big business to find more clean fuel

Qantas Airways Ltd. is hunting for scarce supplies of sustainable aviation fuel to use on key routes to the US and Europe, partly because so many of the airline’s corporate customers need to cut their carbon emissions from travel.

Australia’s biggest businesses are increasingly asking when Qantas will obtain larger quantities of the cleaner-burning fuel, Graeme Potger, the airline’s head of sustainable aviation fuel, said at a renewable fuels conference in Canberra on Tuesday. 

Sectors such as professional services, which includes management consultants, are especially keen on SAF because they don’t want ballooning emissions from travel to stop them seeing clients, Potger said.

The corporate pressure shows that aviation’s slow walk toward net zero by 2050 may not be enough for the lucrative customers that often fly in premium classes. Airlines are desperate to buy more SAF, but the current supply is less than 1% of global requirements. 

SAF can cut emissions by as much as 80%, but production is concentrated in the US and Europe. That makes it hard for Qantas to use it on flights leaving Australia. 

Still, Potger said it’s clear that Qantas somehow needs to secure SAF for important routes to and from New Zealand, Singapore and the Americas, as well the ultra-long London-Perth service.

“We’re going to have to progressively get SAF on both ends” of those legs, he said. “I’ve had hundreds of conversations with corporate Australia and some sectors are feeling it more acutely than others.”