Industry Insights with Jan-Marcus Lueckhof, DHL Group - Actions for Airlines to Reach SAF Targets
Jan-Marcus Lueckhof
Senior Expert - Sustainable Aviation
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DHL Group
Jan-Marcus Lueckhof, a member of the Sustainable Aviation Futures EU Congress Advisory Board, shares what DHL Group is doing to meet their ambitious targets of SAF blending of 30% for their air transport operations by 2030, and the impact of Non-CO2 Policy on airlines operating in Europe.
Tell us about your background, and responsibilities within DHL Group
I work for DHL Group in corporate development. I actually have a a background in aeronautical engineering and science, and joined the DHL Group roughly two years ago. I'm now part of a team called Clean Operations Office, and as the name already suggests we are essentially responsible for setting the decarbonisation targets for the whole group globally.
This includes not only the target setting and managing our science based target contributions, but also includes a decarbonisation road map that we have invented and then monitored continuously. And it of course also includes helping our business units in achieving those goals.
So my particular role in that theme is taking care of sustainable aviation and this is currently mainly focused on sustainable aviation fuels (SAF). And I am responsible especially for the long term strategic SAF planning and SAF sourcing.
What are some of the steps that DHL Group are taking as an airline to meet your stated objective of SAF blending of 30% for your air transport operations by 2030?
Well, that goal is of course ambitious and we know that and we are also proud of that ambitious goal, and we are currently actively trying to reach that step by step. We are currently one of the largest SAF users in the world. Just last year, we have used 72 kilotons of SAF, and that is a share of roughly 3.7% of our own scope one emissions.
So, we feel like we are one of the leading players in that field, and of course we are on the one side proud of that, but on the other side we know that there's still a lot to do and a lot to work on. We of course do have long term agreements which we have also published with quite a few companies already. But we are currently in the process of not only procuring SAF for the short term, but also working towards SAF agreements that are long term, that will also enable the build up of new facilities and that will support us to reach our goal in 2030.
You touched upon the need for scaling up, and the panel discussions at Sustainable Aviation Futures EU Congress that you’ll be participating in will focus on scaling SAF and the other will focus on the non CO2 aspects of SAF. What do you expect to be the key take aways for the audience from each of these sessions?
So, scaling SAF is something that we simply need to succeed in. Not only we as a company, but we as an industry and, quite frankly, we as humanity need to succeed at that. Tt's just something that we need, to decarbonize aviation.
There's no alternative that is available right now, especially for those heavy duty and long haul flights. We need SAF and we need to scale it up quite quickly, to be honest. And that is something that I would also like to emphasise in that panel: that there's a huge growing demand for SAF and that we all need to work together to actually achieve that. Not only the producers and not only the airlines, but also for example, customers should actually signal demand for carbon neutral deliveries and transport.
And then the second panel that I will be participating in is something that is also very close to my heart which is not on decarbonising, not a focus on the carbon part, but it's on the non-CO2.
The non-carbon emissions of aviation, which is an issue that is probably not quite well known to the general public, but which is very important, is actually is responsible for roughly two thirds of the total climate impact of aviation itself.
That is something that we really take a close look at, it's something that needs a lot more research, but it's going to be implemented at least in the monitoring part of the European Emission Trading System as of next year.
So, it's a very immediate action that needs to take place. All the airlines and all the major players in that field are currently working towards making that possible, to at least measure the impact reliably. And then of course, in a second step, we need to find ways to mitigate that impact. And that is something that needs quite a lot of groundbreaking work, and that's something that we need to discuss on that panel as well.