Technical Expert Consultant for the Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection (CAEP) Fuels Task Group (FTG) in the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)

Transport Canada is looking to procure the services of a subject matter expert (SME) to provide technical expertise to Transport Canada Civil Aviation (TCCA) on sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) and lower carbon aviation fuels (LCAF), supporting Canada’s participation in the FTG and participating in the review/preparation of reports to CAEP, to reflect Canada’s position on key issues. SAF are an important element of ICAO’s basket of measures to reduce aviation emissions. In its Resolution A40-18 (2019), the ICAO Assembly acknowledged the need for SAF to be developed and deployed in an economically feasible as well as a socially and environmentally acceptable manner. ICAO requested Member States to identify existing approaches to assess the sustainability of all general alternative fuels, including those for use in aviation. These assessments should consider the following factors: • greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) reduction on a life cycle basis; • respecting the areas of high importance for biodiversity, conservation and benefits for people from ecosystems, in accordance with international and national regulations; and • contributing to local social and economic development, and competition with food and water should be avoided.

The Assembly also requested States to adopt measures to ensure the sustainability of alternative fuels for aviation, building on existing approaches or by combining various approaches, and to monitor, at a national level, the sustainability of the production of alternative fuels for aviation.

CAEP, through its FTG, has been working on the development of processes and methodologies for consideration of SAF under CORSIA, including globally accepted sustainability criteria and life cycle methodologies. An integral part of this assessment is to determine life cycle GHG emissions, including induced land-use change (ILUC) impacts, for a variety of feedstocks and production pathways.

Canada is supporting the FTG and the development of a SAF industry in Canada. Canada needs to ensure that proposals developed at ICAO CAEP’s FTG can work in Canada and reflect Canadian realities for SAF production, wherever a Canadian context is applicable.