Wizz Air’s Sewage-to-Gas Deal Helps Blow Up 5 Power Myths

Final Up to date on: thirty first Might 2025, 05:20 pm

Wizz Air made headlines not too long ago by signing a significant deal to buy sustainable aviation gasoline derived from handled human poop. The optics are amusing, however the implications are profound. This isn’t a fringe experiment or a company PR stunt. It’s a sign that the aviation trade is transferring towards a critical decarbonization technique grounded in actual chemistry, actual feedstocks, and real-world constraints. The choice to guess on SAF from municipal waste not solely speaks volumes about what airways assume is feasible, it additionally helps dismantle 5 of probably the most persistent misconceptions nonetheless infecting vitality and local weather discourse.

The first incorrect assumption is the concept we’re going to want vastly extra liquid fuels than we do at present. This perception underpins a stunning variety of vitality transition eventualities, particularly those who downplay electrification or assume a strongly growing demand curve for jet gasoline, diesel, and bunker gasoline a long time into the long run. However the numbers don’t assist it. World oil demand for transport is peaking or has already peaked, and all indicators level to a speedy contraction over the subsequent 25 years.

In my very own modeling, printed over the previous a number of years, I’ve projected a state of affairs the place 100% of floor transportation is galvanized—vehicles, buses, vehicles, rail, two- and three-wheelers. In that world, the demand for liquid fuels drops by over 80%, and what’s left is concentrated within the hard-to-electrify sectors: long-haul aviation and deep-sea delivery. Aviation gasoline demand does develop modestly via 2050 beneath my mannequin, which is extra pessimistic and I feel reasonable about progress, however hybrid electrical regional turboprops take over shorter hops of as much as 1,000 km as battery vitality densities climb. My projection is for less than 110 million tons of liquid fuels required for aviation.

Maritime delivery gasoline demand, in the meantime, shrinks dramatically as bulk fossil gasoline and iron ore shipments decline. Oil, coal, and LNG delivery collectively characterize about 40% of tonnage at present, uncooked iron ore is one other 15%, and all 4 are in structural decline. By the top of the century, I mission annual liquid gasoline demand for marine delivery is more likely to be within the 70 million tons of diesel equal vary globally. That’s lower than a 3rd of at present’s delivery gasoline quantity, and with reductions in aviation gasoline demand as a consequence of electrification, high-speed rail and different elements, we’re a future the place the full world want for liquid fuels could be one-tenth of what it’s at present.

The second false impression that refuses to die is the notion that biofuels can solely come from prime agricultural land. This concern traces again to first-generation biofuels—corn ethanol, soy biodiesel, palm oil—the place considerations, some reliable if overstated, about land use, meals costs, and deforestation emerged. However that legacy doesn’t mirror the fact of superior biofuel manufacturing at present. The Wizz Air deal is an ideal instance. Biosolids—primarily the residual natural matter left over from wastewater therapy—are ample, underutilized, and pose a methane emissions threat if unmanaged. Changing them to SAF doesn’t displace meals crops or use new land. As an alternative, it turns a municipal waste legal responsibility right into a high-value, low-carbon product.

And biosolids are only one class. In my complete evaluation of viable biofuel pathways, I catalogued a minimum of ten scalable choices that rely solely on waste and non-food biomass: municipal stable waste, forestry residues, agricultural byproducts like corn stover and wheat straw, animal manure, and even landfill gasoline. The worldwide provide of those supplies is huge. The world wastes roughly 2.5 billion tons of meals yearly. Europe alone generates over 1.5 billion tons of livestock manure per yr. At a conservative yield of 0.4 tons of gasoline per ton of dried biomass, the waste streams we’re at present mismanaging might provide effectively over 500 million tons of low-carbon gasoline yearly. That’s greater than sufficient to fulfill the residual liquid gasoline demand in a maximally electrified transport system. No new farmland required. No tradeoff between meals and gasoline. Only a redirection of waste into the vitality system.

The third false perception is that renewable electrical energy will change into successfully free, enabling a cascade of ultra-cheap electrochemical pathways to dominate. This false impression stems from the marginal price argument: since wind and photo voltaic don’t have any gasoline price, they need to finally drive electrical energy costs to zero a part of the time. It’s true that the marginal price of technology is low. However the system price of delivering agency, dependable, high-quality electrical energy is just not. In high-renewables grids like California or South Australia, we do see adverse pricing occasions throughout photo voltaic peaks. However these are short-duration, location-specific artifacts of a misaligned supply-demand curve.

To truly energy a course of like hydrogen electrolysis or artificial gasoline synthesis economically, you want high-capacity-factor electrical energy, 60% or extra. Should you’re relying solely on intermittent surplus, your electrolyzers or synthesis reactors are sitting idle more often than not, and your capital prices explode. I’ve run the numbers in a number of areas, and the story is constant: surplus renewable electrical energy is just not free if you want it at scale, and its temporal distribution makes it unsuitable because the spine of any main gasoline manufacturing system. California’s duck curve is just not a enterprise mannequin.

This brings us to the fourth fantasy: that inexperienced hydrogen will likely be low cost. It received’t. Hydrogen is a worthwhile industrial enter for very particular contexts—ammonia manufacturing, petrochemical refining and maybe steelmaking. However as a general-purpose vitality substitute, it fails the physics and the economics. Electrolyzers are costly, and their price per kilogram of hydrogen is extremely delicate to utilization. Hydrogen is dear to compress, retailer and distribute.

In transportation, hydrogen gasoline cell automobiles have a complete price of possession roughly 2 to three occasions that of battery electrical equivalents. I’ve documented a number of real-world instances the place hydrogen vehicles, buses and different automobiles failed on economics alone, not to mention the infrastructure challenges. In vitality phrases, inexperienced hydrogen multiplies the upstream electrical energy demand by an element of three in comparison with direct electrification. Each kilowatt-hour routed via an electrolyzer, then compressed, saved, and run via a gasoline cell finally ends up delivering a fraction of the helpful vitality {that a} battery does.

That’s taking part in out now, as each group that created fantastical projections of low cost inexperienced hydrogen adjusts their price projections to suit the realities that had been apparent after they first made them 5 to 10 years in the past. BNEF, CSIRO, LUT and extra are all lastly realizing that their numbers are bogus, however solely BNEF has up to now had the center to triple its electrolyzer price projections for 2050, with the remainder solely nudging prices up yearly since 2020’s projections. Contacts inform me that the IEA gave the duty of doing the primary projections to an intern, and I discover that credible. This wasn’t intentional disinformation, by the way in which, this was technoeconomic incompetence mixed with cognitive biases. It stays indefensible in my eyes, nevertheless. Billions of {dollars} and years of time have been wasted, and extra time and money that might be spent on precise local weather options proceed to be thrown on the area.

The fact is that hydrogen is an industrial feedstock that can see important declines in demand from present ranges as 40% of present use is for petroleum refining. One other 30% is used for ammonia, which can also be going to see declines as its value will increase and agrigenetic nitrogen fixing, precision agriculture, drone spraying and different levers displace its present overuse.

The last delusion that must be retired is the concept artificial fuels—these created from inexperienced hydrogen and captured CO₂—will likely be cheaper than biofuels, maybe even as low cost as fossil fuels. This one will get a whole lot of airtime in e-fuel hype circles, significantly in Europe the place coverage compromises have allowed artificial fuels to maintain inside combustion engines on life assist previous 2035. However the thermodynamics are unforgiving. Making an artificial hydrocarbon gasoline requires monumental quantities of electrical energy: to make hydrogen, to seize and purify CO₂, and to run the synthesis course of itself. The round-trip effectivity is dreadful—someplace between 10% and 15% from grid electrical energy to movement when burned in an engine. Meaning you’re spending 5 to seven occasions extra electrical energy per kilometer than you’ll with a battery electrical automobile. And that electrical energy isn’t free, as we’ve established.

In the present day, artificial jet gasoline prices between $5 and $10 per gallon in pilot portions. Bio-based SAF, in contrast, is already being produced at business scale for $2 to $4 per gallon from used cooking oil, tallow, and now, biosolids. Whilst e-fuel know-how improves, the hole will persist. Airways aren’t ideologues, they’ll purchase the most affordable low-carbon gasoline that meets ASTM specs and avoids reputational threat. Proper now, and certain endlessly, that’s biofuel. Wizz Air is aware of this. That’s why they’re locking in biosolid-derived SAF, not hydrogen-derived e-kerosene.

Biofuels are all the time going to be two to a few occasions dearer than fossil fuels if we let the environment be used as a free sewer, however artificial fuels will likely be 4 to 6 occasions as costly. Consequently, no artificial fuels.

The fact is easier and extra elegant than the myths. We are going to electrify all the pieces we are able to—vehicles, vehicles, buses, rail, ferries, short-hop planes—and we are going to use sustainable biofuels made principally from waste biomass streams for what we are able to’t electrify but. That residual demand is modest, and we have now the feedstocks to fulfill it with out touching a single hectare of food-producing land. We are going to develop a bunch of soy beans and related issues for biofuels just because we have now a lot of agricultural land. There’s no scarcity or competitors for meals, as evidenced by us throwing away a full third of the energy we manufacture yearly.

The vitality transition isn’t about miracle molecules or magic catalysts. It’s about physics, economics, and pragmatic deployment. Wizz Air’s poop-to-jet-fuel deal is only one knowledge level, however it helps illustrate why the 5 persistent illusions should be faraway from coverage and funding choices.