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By Joanna Plucinska, Emma Farge
GENEVA (Reuters) -The aviation industry is not moving fast enough to reach its targets for producing and using sustainable aviation fuel, Willie Walsh, head of airline trade body IATA, said, as the sector aimed for net zero emissions by 2050.
"We're not making as much progress as we'd hoped for and we're certainly not making as much progress as we need," Walsh said on Tuesday at an IATA media day in Geneva.
Sustainable aviation fuel makes up only around 0.3% of the world's jet fuel usage and is projected to only account for 0.7% by 2025, according to IATA data, with experts saying the production rate of the green fuel needs to grow quickly for the sector to achieve its emissions goals.
An IATA study presented on Tuesday showed that global production of green jet fuel in 2024 was only 1 million tons, lower than IATA's projection a year ago that it would be 1.5 million tons.
Walsh pointed to a lack of biorefineries under construction which could produce the green jet fuel, many of which require extensive capital expenditure to get built.
IATA has repeatedly pointed to oil majors to shoulder the responsibility to ramp up sustainable aviation fuel production, rather than airlines, who do not produce the fuel themselves.
The trade body said it would launch a new project to better track global green aviation fuel initiatives next year to provide more transparency for the sector's progress.
Europe lagged behind the United States in crafting incentives to boost investment in production facilities, Walsh said.
Walsh said it was unclear what the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump would do regarding the 2022 U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and how it would impact ongoing green aviation fuel production.
"There was quite a lot of progress in the first Trump administration in this area as well. So I don't think this is a black and white issue," he told reporters.
The IRA contains hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies for clean energy and is billed as outgoing President Joe Biden's signature law to combat climate change.
(Reporting by Emma Farge and Joanna Plucinska; Editing by Susan Fenton and Bernadette Baum)
