The adoption of “cleaner” fuels by the airline industry is within reach as long as oil companies introduce a share of agrofuels into their fossil kerosene. Everything will become very complicated, however, the day the sector switches to synthetic kerosene, due to the gigantic quantities of carbon-free electricity required for the electrolysis of CO2 caught in the air. A factory that would produce 50,000 tons per year, as envisaged by the actors who embark on this sector, “would need 1.1 terawatt hours, or more than 1,000 hectares of photovoltaic panels”calculates the McKinsey firm in a report published in 2022.
The needs are “considerable”confirms the Academy of Technologies, a multidisciplinary body which published very precise figures in March 2022. “By 2050, the decarbonization of the economy will require a doubling of electricity production in advanced societies and a tripling on average in the world. In a France whose electricity production would be twice that of today, it will be necessary to mobilize 10% of this electricity production to manufacture the 6 million tonnes of sustainable kerosene required by air transport”, she says. Concretely, French production, currently set at 500 terawatt hours, should increase by 20 terawatt hours by 2035 and 170 terawatt hours by 2050.
An unlikely scenario
France would nevertheless have a card to play, thanks to its “low-carbon electricity mix” that other countries do not have and will have to compensate by imports of green electricity. However, this assumes that the life of French nuclear reactors is extended to sixty years, and that sustained growth is ensured for wind and solar power. And, in the 2040-2050 decade, France will have to significantly increase its low-carbon electricity production, “which requires relaunching today a nuclear reactor construction sector”adds the Academy of Technologies.
In the short term, it is hopeless, considers Med Kechidi, professor of management sciences at the University of Toulouse. « In France, the production of electricity from wind and solar origin reached 52 terawatt hours in 2020. To replace kerosene of oil origin, it would be necessary to add at least 75 of them just for aviation, which implies colossal investments. , impossible to achieve by 2030.”
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