Emily Kwong

Just 10.

Just 10.

Because there's so many obstacles to doing this.

There's high upfront costs.

We have the raw materials question and also just the amount of cooperation needed between so many different groups, government, industry and research to truly make SAF at scale and reinvent flying as we know it.

And that's kind of what I want to spend the rest of the episode talking about, Gina, just the sheer amount of collaboration and political will that would have to happen to decarbonize aviation.

Driving emits much less carbon than flying.

So we should just road trip more, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Short distances, maybe drive instead of fly.

This, of course, doesn't solve the problem, though, of decarbonizing aviation in the first place.

That would take federal policy.

Now, there were SAF credits put in place by the Biden administration in an effort to incentivize airlines to find alternative fuels.

But last year, the Trump administration cut the SAF tax credit almost in half, kind of took the heart out of the policy to make SAF desirable for U.S.

airlines.

Not at the federal level right now, no.

But at the state level, in the state of Pennsylvania, it's a slightly different story.

Christina Kasotis is the CEO of the Allegheny County Airport Authority, which operates Pittsburgh International Airport.

Now, this airport's kind of interesting.

Back in 2021, Pittsburgh became the first major airport in the world to be powered by its own microgrid, run on five natural gas turbines and eight acres of solar, which is super helpful when the main grid that connects Pittsburgh goes down like happened last year.