SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, September 14 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The vice president and counselor of Economy, Industry, Commerce and the Self-Employed of the Government of the Canary Islands, Manuel Domínguez, applauded this Thursday the decision of the European Parliament for the archipelago to remain exempt from the application of the Regulation on the Use of Alternative Fuels in Air Transport and the desire for the Canary Islands to become a producer of alternative fuels for aviation has advanced.
The new community regulations will promote, starting in 2025, the use of sustainable fuels in aviation (SAF) as part of the commitments made by this sector to reduce the carbon footprint in passenger transport.
“We celebrate the sensitivity of the European Parliament towards the Canary Islands and the respect for the differentiated treatment with the outermost regions. Our island status makes us totally dependent on air transport and, for that reason, we also need a longer period of time in order to adopt the necessary decisions that prevent this new European legislation from increasing the cost of air transport on the islands,” he says in a note sent by his department.
Thus, he indicates that “one of those challenges will be to prioritize the Canary Islands becoming a producer of alternative fuels for aviation because their use is not renounced.”
On the contrary, he points out, “we will fight so that this industry develops on the islands, which will undoubtedly translate into improved connectivity, diversification of employment and sustainability.”
Along these lines, he points out that this new regulation “obliges us to study incentives for the distribution and production of synthetic fuel because this will be the future of the global aeronautical industry and because, at the same time, the European moratorium will be a great opportunity to diversify the economy of the islands, strengthen their industrial fabric and advance in the field of sustainability and the creation of ‘green jobs’ for the archipelago,” he argued.
UP TO 70% IN 2050
The vice president recalls that the Regulation on the Use of Alternative Fuels in Air Transport establishes that, as of 2025, a minimum of 2% of the fuels used in aviation must be sustainable and that this percentage will increase, in a phased manner every five years, until reaching 70% in 2050.
“Now we must also work to adapt the airport facilities of the Canary Islands to this type of sustainable refueling. Logically, we defend the environmental objective posed by this new community regulation and we believe that the necessary decarbonization should not imply, in any case, a detriment to the connectivity of the Canary Islands, nor for the pockets of its citizens,” he emphasizes.
The Minister of Tourism, Jéssica de León, also expressed, for her part, that the decision adopted by the European Parliament “represents confirmation that Canarian citizens and the tourism industry will not have the obligation to use SAF fuel which, by its poor development and production, was going to make plane tickets more expensive and reduce competitiveness as a tourist destination compared to other non-European markets.
