“This is a huge opportunity for Australia,” said Mr Joyce, with the potential to create a “huge amount of jobs” and offer national fuel security.

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Qantas has recently signed SAF supply contracts in California, where Mr Joyce said its cost had dropped to parity with kerosene-based fuel, and London, where it was around twice the price. European airline group Air France-KLM introduced a SAF surcharge of between €1 to €4 ($1.4 to $6) on all economy class tickets in January to cover the cost of using SAF.

Susanne Becken, a professor of sustainable tourism at Griffith University, said Qantas’ emissions strategy was comprehensive and ambitious by global standards. But she said the airline should set absolute emissions reductions targets, as well as a net target that relied heavily on offsets.

“The problem with carbon offsets is that they rely on someone else reducing their emissions. It effectively moves emissions from one place to another, but the sum of them does not decline,” Professor Becken said. “Offsetting provides a temporary benefit, but is not a long-term solution. Everyone will have to achieve absolute reductions, even airlines.”

Qantas’ head of sustainability Andrew Parker said that offsets would make up part of its 2050 net zero target and a “very large element” of its 2030 target.

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Qantas, ANZ and Japanese oil and gas giant INPEX signed an agreement on Thursday to develop a reforestation project in Western Australia’s Wheatbelt region to generate carbon credits. The trio will investigate the potential to grow crops that can be used in SAF production as part of the revegetation project.

And Qantas also said it would ban single-use plastic from its flights by 2026 and send no general waste to landfill by 2030. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, aviation accounted for around 2 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions and close to 4 per cent of Australia’s.

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