Following a pledge announced Tuesday morning at NBAA-BACE 2021 that business aviation will reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, Omer Bar-Yohay, co-founder and CEO of electric aircraft manufacturer Eviation Aircraft, said, “I think we not only can do it and must do it, but we can actually do it earlier. We can put the pressure on the supply chain to push the technology to where we should be.”

Speaking at the second annual Business Aviation Sustainability Summit midday Tuesday at BACE (the first edition was held virtually last year as part of VBACE), Bar-Yohay was part of a discussion moderated by journalist Miles O’Brien that also featured Bryan Sherbacow, president and CEO of new sustainable fuel company Alder Fuels.

Bar-Yohay noted that the business aviation industry has been improving its efficiency on the order of 2 to 3 percent a year for the past several years. “That happens because it makes economic sense,” he said. “Yes, it’s also the right thing to do for the climate. Yes, it’s also good for a lot of things, but this is the driving force that makes things happen.”

Sherbacow, who was formerly the chief commercial officer at SAF producer World Energy, noted that 2050 is closer than it seems. “One of the things that people need to be mindful of is that targets that are out there on the horizon, in order to achieve them, we need to be pushing really hard today. We can’t be complacent that we have time.”

Describing the process needed to create a sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) refinery, he stated: “These are significant projects that take a significant amount of planning and time to be able to implement.” Aside from obtaining financing and other hurdles, “an average refinery conversion that produces fuels is going to take about three years on average, that’s for one and we will need dozens of these things.”

Both Bar-Yohay and Sherbacow agreed that government support will be crucial over the coming years to spur environmental improvements, through the funding of research and development and providing incentives to fuel producers to increase SAF capacity and adoption.