Aviation is under pressure. Rightfully or not, but much of the current debate is built on a flawed premise — and that makes the proposed solutions just as flawed.

The wrong question is: How do we fly less?

The right question is: How do we fly without adding fossil carbon to the atmosphere?

Wrong problem, wrong solution

Aviation accounts for roughly 2–3% of global CO₂ emissions. But it represents far more in terms of economic connectivity, global trade, medical supply chains, and human relationships. Telling the world to simply fly less is a political non-starter — and it’s technically unnecessary.

The combustion engine is not the problem. Fossil fuel is. Always. It’s never the engine, as we all know. Or should know. That distinction matters enormously for how we design climate policy.

If we replace fossil kerosene with synthetic, electrofuel-based or solar kerosene — produced from renewable electricity or solar heat energy, water, and CO₂ captured from the atmosphere — the climate impact of flying drops to near zero. The plane is the same. The engine is the same. Only the carbon cycle changes: from extractive (fossil) to circular (synthetic).

Wrong framing in policy

Unfortunately, much of European climate policy still conflates the problem (fossil fuels) with the technology (combustion). ReFuelEU Aviation is a step in the right direction: it mandates increasing blending quotas for sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), reaching 70% by 2050. But the implementation targets for e-SAF — the most climate-effective category, produced via Power-to-X — remain modest at the start.

The wrong framing here is treating all SAF categories as equivalent. Biofuels, HVO, solar and electrofuels are not the same. Only e-SAF and solar SAF— synthetic kerosene produced from green hydrogen and captured CO₂ — delivers genuine climate neutrality independent of biomass availability or land use trade-offs.

Wrong timeline

There is a third wrong: the timeline assumption. Many assume that synthetic fuels are a distant future technology. They are not. SPIN members Ineratec and Synhelion are already producing! Several SPIN members are working on real projects, real investments, and real molecules.

The transition is not waiting for 2050. It is happening now, plant by plant, step by step.

Asking the right question

SPIN — the Swiss Power-to-X Collaborative Innovation Network — exists precisely to ask the right questions and build the infrastructure to answer them. Our members include technology developers, energy companies, airports, research institutions, and policymakers. Together, we believe the future of aviation is not less flying. It’s fossil-free flying.

That’s not the wrong ambition. That’s the only ambition worth having.

Let’s discuss at the Swiss Power-to-X Congress, taking place in Bern on 22nd September.