Jet Biofuels Take Off
Jet fuel is responsible for upwards of 40 percent of an airline’s operational costs, making this industry particularly sensitive to volatility in the oil market. As a result, airlines, airplane manufacturers and federal governments are major stakeholders in the effort to find a stable, sustainable replacement for fossil fuels to power planes.
British tycoon Richard Branson has long touted biofuels as a way for the airline industry to address volatile oil prices, climate change and peak oil. Last February, one of his Virgin Atlantic jumbo jets was the very first commercial airliner to fly with biofuel. Air New Zealand and KLM have also completed biofuel test flights.
Airplane manufacturing giants Airbus and Boeing are working to ensure their planes are capable of running on biofuels. Boeing has already completed five test flights using biofuels and Airbus recently announced plans with JetBlue Airways to test biofuels as well.
British Airways and the US-based Solena Group announced an agreement earlier this month to build Europe’s first plant to produce jet fuel from organic waste. The plant is expected to go online in 2014 and produce 16 million gallons of fuel annually, all of which will be sold to British Airways. The fuel is still awaiting regulatory approval in Britain.
Last week two of the Middle East’s biggest airlines – Etihad and Qatar Airways – became partners in a project to demonstrate the commercial viability of an aviation biofuel using a farmed saltwater plant feedstock.
In the US, an emerging feedstock for aviation biofuels – camelina – is set to double in acreage in 2010. Seattle-based AltAir Fuels reached a deal in December with 14 airlines to supply 750 million gallons of bio-based jet and diesel fuel made from this camelina feedstock.
Commercial airlines are not the only interested parties. The US and Chinese governments have both been investing heavily in researching bio-based jet fuels as potential replacements for conventional jet fuels. The Pentagon recently announced that it is within months of producing a jet fuel from algae for the same cost as conventional jet fuel.
The head of the airline industry’s trade association, International Air Transport Association (IATA), which represents 230 airlines, has called for increased subsidies and investments in biofuel research. The industry has set an aggressive goal of carbon-neutral growth by 2020, part of a wider strategy to cut their 2005 net emissions in half by 2050.
Source: Energy Boom
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