The Canary Islands are looking for a place to produce clean fuel for airplanes with urban waste

The production center, which will be born from the public initiative but will have support from the private sector, will be located in Gran Canaria or Tenerife, as announced yesterday the general director of Tourism Planning, Training and Promotion of the Government of the Canary Islands, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, during the event held at the Tenerife North airport by the Iberia Express company, and in which it was recognized as the most punctual airline in Europe in 2023.

The future of aviation depends on the use of this fuel, which substantially reduces CO2 emissions. At the end of last year, the European Parliament approved the ReFuelEU Aviation Regulation, which requires airlines to adopt a series of SAF usage ratios in the coming years. By 2025 – next year – airlines must ensure that 2% of fuel comes from sustainable sources. Five years later, the ratio rises to 6% and is 20% by 2035. In 2050 it should reach 70%. The problem lies in its low production -in 2019 it only represented 0.1% of conventional fuel- and its high price, which is between 3 and 6 times higher than conventional fuel.

A recent PwC study titled ‘Study on the impacts linked to the ecological transition in the aviation sector’ indicates that between 30 and 40 SAF production plants in Spain would be needed to decarbonize Spanish aviation on time. That is where the Canary Islands want to play a fundamental role.

Yesterday, Iberia Express received, from the global consulting firm specialized in aviation analysis Cirium, the award that accredits it as the most punctual airline in Europe in 2023. The delivery ceremony, which took place at the Tenerife North Airport, was attended by Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, general director of Tourism Planning, Training and Promotion of the Government of the Canary Islands; Francisco Javier Osmán, director of the Tenerife North Airport, the Marketing Director of CIRIUM, Mike Malik, and Carlos Gómez, CEO of Iberia Express.

With an arrival punctuality percentage of 84.58% last year, Iberia Express was also positioned as the fifth most punctual low-cost airline in the world, according to Cirium’s On-time Performance Report, the most relevant annual report in the industry. about punctuality. Furthermore, in the Canary Islands, the company operated nearly 16,000 flights in 2023 with departure punctuality reaching 88.83%.