Targeted use of paraffinic kerosene: Potentials and implications

Aviation contributes to anthropogenic climate change mainly by contrails, CO₂ and NO_x emissions, whereof contrails are considered the largest single contributor to the radiative forcing from aviation. Powering aircraft with kerosene containing fewer or no-aromatics, i.e., “Sustainable Aviation Fuels” (SAF) or hydroprocessed, fossil-based kerosene, can significantly reduce contrail climate forcing. However, such kerosene is currently scarcely available. Moreover, less than 10 % of the flights worldwide cause more than 80 % of the contrail climate forcing. Hence, this study investigates a targeted allocation of paraffinic, i.e., aromatics-free kerosene to flights and flight segments with the highest contrail climate forcing, by calculating the resulting contrail energy forcing (in J) on 844 364 flight trajectories worldwide departing from five large European airports in 2019.

The contrail radiative forcing integrated over contrail evolution (i.e., contrail energy forcing [J]) is simulated for a reference fleet powered with conventional kerosene of 14.1 m - % hydrogen content. 5 % of overall kerosene demand assumed to be paraffinic kerosene with 15.3 m - % hydrogen content is allocated via a uniform, a flight-specific and a segment-specific approach. The uniform allocation assumes that all flights receive the same blend of 5 % paraffinic kerosene. The other cases target 100 % paraffinic kerosene either to flights or segments with highest contrail energy forcing. Compared to the reference, the results indicate a reduction on contrail energy forcing by 4 %, 36 % and 55 %, respectively. For market shares of paraffinic kerosene up to 30 %, a segment specific allocation appears advantageous compared to a flight specific allocation. However, they might require airport and aircraft modifications. Uncertainties in contrail climate benefits can be reduced by providing additional information on kerosene properties and accurate meteorological data. Overall, this study highlights robust potentials of paraffinic kerosene to significantly reduce the climate forcing from aviation.