# MISC | Alternative Fuels Research



## hkskyline

*BA says time to speed up alternative fuel research *
By Michael Smith 

LONDON, June 29 (Reuters) - British Airways , Europe's third-largest airline, said it wanted to start working with fuel makers on researching biofuels amid pressure on airlines to reduce emissions and the cost of jet fuel. 

However, a serious alternative to powering airline jet engines was still a long way off, BA said on Thursday. 

"We are keen to get the fuel manufacturers engaged on discussion about biofuels," BA's head of environmental affairs Andrew Sentance told reporters. 

"That is a little way away in terms of research and development but certainly something we should have on our agenda." 

While there were no radical breakthroughs to replace jet fuel on the horizon, airlines were starting to look at alternatives for other power sources on board planes, he said. 

BA and other airlines are under increasing pressure to reduce carbon dioxide emissions on environmental grounds as well as to slash fuel costs as oil prices soar. 

The European Parliament is scheduled to vote next week on a report recommending airlines be included in an emissions trading scheme to help curb pollution and tackle climate change. 

The EU government and major airlines including BA have backed the inclusion of aircraft in the scheme as an alternative to other taxes. 

However, Sentance said that BA wants the scheme to apply to flights within the European Union only to avoid disputes with carriers from other parts of the world who would object. BA makes most of its profits from long-haul operations, particularly transatlantic flights. 

Sentance said forecasts that inclusion in the emissions trading scheme would add 1 to 2 euros to the cost of a short-haul flight were realistic, although BA declined to give its own forecasts. 

The current system, launched last year, puts a limit on the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main gas blamed for global warming, that big polluters like power plants can emit. 

Companies buy more rights to pollute if they overshoot their target or sell them if they come in below the cap. 

Officials have said aviation would not enter the scheme until 2008 at the earliest because any formal proposal from the Commission must go through the EU legislative process.


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## Æsahættr

Well, I hope they find some soon.


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## Principes

me 2


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## hkskyline

*Airlines must look at alternative fuels to boost efficiency: IATA *

GENEVA, July 27, 2006 (AFP) - Airlines must adapt to high oil prices and consider alternative fuels and other innovations to regain profitability despite a 6.7-percent growth in passenger traffic in the first half of 2006, the top industry association said Thursday. 

Airlines are still battling for financial prosperity despite growing revenues and better load factors in the first half of the year, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said in a statement. 

"Change is urgent and now is the time. Airline efficiency gains must be matched throughout the value chain. And we must find new ways of doing business," said IATA Director General Giovanni Bisignani. 

"The bottom line is all about oil. Prices continue at near record levels and we expect a fuel bill of 112 billion dollars this year at an average price of 66 dollars per barrel," he added. 

"Increased political instability in the Middle East does not bode well for a price drop any time soon." 

Bisignani said operational changes were improving efficiency. But airlines needed to be able to go further, he insisted. 

"The 100 percent conversion to (electronic) e-ticketing by the end of 2007 is a great example." 

"But we now look to the oil industry to move faster at developing alternative fuels to further improve efficiency and environmental performance," said Bisignani. 

"The good news is that neither the extraordinary price of oil nor the inching-up of interest rates negatively impacted demand," he added. 

IATA represents about 260 companies that account for more than 90 percent of world air traffic. 

Last month, passenger traffic grew by 6.5 percent compared to June 2005, to bring average growth over the first six months of the year to 6.7 percent. 

Airlines achieved high average load factors of 78.3 percent in June, a measure of the number of passengers carried on each aircraft and their efficiency. 

However, IATA is maintaining its forecast of about 3.0 billion dollars in losses industry-wide at the end of the year, fuelled by an expected additional bill of 24 billion dollars due to increasing jet fuel prices. 

IATA spokesman Anthony Concil declined to specify any particular alternative to current jet fuel, pointing only to possible synthetic or biofuel alternatives. 

The industry is coming under pressure to clean up emissions from aircraft even further, amid claims that air travel has a significant impact on global warming. 

IATA has rejected a carbon tax on greenhouse gas emissions that France is levying on each airline ticket sold. 

"There is a bit of hysteria about the impact of air travel on climate change but the industry is committed to improving its environmental performance," Concil told AFP. 

Airlines have traditionally pointed to a 70 percent improvement in fuel efficiency in aircraft since the 1970s. 

Until recently IATA was lukewarm about the feasability or value of cleaner fuels. 

However, just over six months ago its board of governors adopted a strategy that described potential alternative fuels as "the primary means to address aviations greenhouse gas emissions", along with other technological changes. 

Concil acknowledged that durably high oil prices make the case for alternative fuels more pressing. 

"We're a bit more enthusiastic for the oil industry to search for alternatives," he said. 

Jet fuel at 90.5 dollars a barrel is approaching a near-100 dollar peak reached last September. The current price is nearly one-third higher than a year ago and nearly three times what it was in 2000. 

Oil prices currently stand around 75 dollars a barrel compared to 20 dollars four years ago. 

Analysts predict that oil prices will stay high because of a combination of supply chain problems and soaring demand from emerging nations, especially in China, on top of traditional tensions that bedevil oil markets.


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## hkskyline

*Virgin jet to fly on biofuel blend in test of cleaner, cheaper option *
5 February 2008
The San Francisco Chronicle

A Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747-400 will make a historic flight later this month from London's Heathrow Airport to Amsterdam. 

Although no passengers will be on board, the contents of the plane's fuel tanks will have everyone in the airline industry watching. 

The trip will be the first time a commercial aircraft has flown on biofuel. 

Airline industry officials, environmentalists and energy companies all have a huge interest in the future of air travel as it pertains to fuel consumption, carbon emissions and global warming. 

From the business perspective, the airlines are under great financial pressure because of soaring fuel costs; the price of crude oil is consistently flirting with $100 per barrel. On the environmental side of things, aircraft represent up to 12 percent of greenhouse gas emissions produced by the U.S. transportation sector, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. 

Additionally, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, greenhouse gas emissions from domestic aircraft are expected to increase 60 percent by 2025. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that increases in air transportation over the next 50 years will result in a threefold increase in aircraft CO{-2} emissions and a 13 percent increase in ozone. 

Environmental advocates say that the Virgin test flight has the potential to be a crucial benchmark in the industry's efforts to develop a biofuel that would help eliminate the industry's dependence on jet fuel and help reduce global carbon emissions. 

Sir Richard Branson, the charismatic founder of Virgin Atlantic who also pioneered the discount carrier Virgin America based in Burlingame, announced the biofuel experiment in 2007, and analysts said it could be feasible by the end of 2008. Virgin said last week it is about 10 months ahead of the anticipated date. 

"This breakthrough will help Virgin Atlantic fly its planes using clean fuel sooner than expected," Branson said in a statement. "The demonstration flight will give us crucial knowledge that we can use to dramatically reduce our carbon footprint." 

To get it done, Virgin Atlantic is teaming with Boeing and GE Aviation, maker of the engines that power the airplane. The airline said the GE Aviation CF6 engines used during the flight will not require modifications to burn biofuel, nor will the biofuel have negative effects on the engines. 

The fuel used in the flight will be a blend of 80 percent conventional jet fuel, which is essentially kerosene, and 20 percent biofuel. Although the exact type of biofuel to be used has not been disclosed, the airline said it is a form that does not compete with food and freshwater resources. 

Branson did note that Virgin Atlantic's British parent company, Virgin Group, pledged to invest all profits from its transportation companies toward developing clean energy, "and with this breakthrough, we are well down the path to achieving our goals." 

Jet aircraft use a petroleum-based fuel generally referred to as Jet A or Jet A-1. For the sake of safety, commercial jet fuel must meet technical and operational specifications. 

In the United States, all aircraft engines must be certified by the Federal Aviation Administration for use, and FAA approval is specific to the fuel that is used with each particular aircraft engine and engine type. So, as it stands, no other type of fuel can currently be used in America, according to the Air Transport Association, the trade association for the nation's major airlines. 

In other words, it will be years before alternative fuels can replace commercial jet fuel. 

"There will be extensive testing before this reaches the commercial market," said former industry executive Henry Harteveldt, an airline industry analyst with Forrester Research in San Francisco. 

Harteveldt added that, despite the fact that Virgin Atlantic, Boeing and GE "have lent a lot of credibility" to the matter, there is some cynicism afoot. "People are saying, 'How real is this?' " 

In September, Boeing, Air New Zealand and Rolls-Royce announced an agreement to conduct a biofuel demonstration flight in the second half of 2008. That flight, too, will be of a Boeing 747-400 equipped with Rolls-Royce engines. 

The search for an alternative to present-day jet fuel extends beyond the commercial airline industry. 

On Dec. 17, the 104th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' first powered flight, the Air Force said it flew an aircraft for the first time ever coast to coast using a synthetic fuel blend. 

A C-17 Globemaster III transport aircraft took off from McChord Air Force Base in Washington State, with its four Pratt and Whitney F117-100 turbofan engines burning a mix of 50 percent traditional jet propulsion-8 aviation fuel and 50 percent Fischer-Tropsch Kerosene, a synthetic aviation fuel derived from natural gas. It is produced in a process called the Fischer-Tropsch method, which is named after the German chemists who invented it in the 1920s, Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch. 

Hours later, the aircraft touched down at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. Officials said the flight was without incident. 

Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne said, "I have established the goal of having the entire (Air Force) fleet certified to fly on a synthetic fuel blend by about 2011." 

That would go a long way toward reducing U.S. dependence on foreign sources of energy, Wynne said, because the conversion process can convert many types of carbon-based materials, such as coal, of which the United States has an abundant supply, to synthetic aviation fuel. 

Environmentalists object to that idea, said Deron Lovaas, transportation analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C., because "it is the path of least resistance to make synthetic fuel from other fossil fuels." 

Lovaas and others argue that liquid coal - coal that has been converted to liquid fuel - releases almost double the global warming emissions per gallon as regular gasoline. The preferred path is toward something sustainable, he said. 

Lovaas said of the Virgin Atlantic test, "Here we are with this futuristic experiment with a source of biofuel. What Branson and the others are doing deserve our praise." 

Meanwhile, California Attorney General Jerry Brown, four other states and three environmental groups filed petitions in December with the Environmental Protection Agency saying it should curb carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted from airplanes, arguing it has a mandate under the Clean Air Act to set emission standards for aircraft. 

"Global warming is such a big challenge that wherever we can reduce greenhouse gases, we must do so. The EPA has abdicated its responsibility in this area for years, and it won't do its job until it's legally required to do so," Brown said. 

The agency has 180 days in which to respond to the petitions, dated Dec. 5.


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## hkskyline

*Virgin test flight for biofuel-powered jumbo jet *

LONDON, Feb 24, 2008 (AFP) - The first flight by a commercial airline to be partly powered by biofuels took off Sunday from London on a short trip to Amsterdam billed as heralding a new eco-friendlier era of airline travel. 

The Virgin AtlanticBoeing 747 jumbo jet, carrying biofuels mixed with traditional kerosene, departed London around midday (1200 GMT) with no passengers on board. 

The plane was using a biofuel blend of babassu oil -- extracted from nuts of the babassu tree -- and coconut oil. Both products are more commonly found in cosmetics like lip balm and shaving cream. 

Virgin Atlantic chief Richard Branson hailed the demonstration flight as a breakthrough for the airline industry and proof that there were viable alternatives to traditional jet fuel. 

The flight will "enable those of us who are serious about reducing our carbon emissions to go on developing the fuels of the future, fuels which will power our aircraft in the years ahead through sustainable next-generation oils, such as algae," Branson said in a statement. 

Airlines are seeing their fuel costs soar owing to surging oil prices, which last week struck record highs above 101 dollars a barrel. 

But many environmentalists argue that biofuels are a poor alternative, pointing out that clearing raw land to produce them actually contributes to global warming by emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases. 

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from new croplands carved into rainforests, savannas, wetlands or grasslands would easily surpass the overall amount of CO2 emissions reduced through the use of biofuels, according to a report in the February 8 edition of Science.


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## FM 2258

Heh...biofuels? So we're going to strip our land of all of its nutrients in order to power vehicles? I thought food was more important. hno:


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## pflo777

yeah, then the citizens of the US wont have so much overweight any more.
Imagine standing at the pump with your SUV, and then you have to decide, what you want: A tripple whopper, or some gallons bio gasoline....

Same goes for flying....damn, you wont se much people with overweight in the future....


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## icracked

Biofuel won't be the future, there's not enough resources to make it happen in a long run and the opportunity cost is huge, giving up food for a slightly better energy than fossil fuel. There's a lot of better, more efficient energy sources out there.


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## hkskyline

*Biofuels maker says US airlines worried about survival, not CO2 *

LOS ANGELES, March 11 (Reuters) - U.S. airlines are too worried about survival to address the big impact their planes are having on the environment, the company behind the world's first commercial bio jet fuel plant said on Tuesday. 

Solena Group, which is developing a facility in California to make renewable jet fuel from municipal waste, is banking on the European Union's proposal to cap airlines' emissions of greenhouse gases to drive demand for its product. 

"The U.S. obviously is still struggling with CO2 issues, so I don't see the airlines making a big effort to buy this," Robert Do, Solena's chief executive, said in an interview. "Airlines are struggling to stay afloat and CO2 issues are not a big interest for them, except for a few leaders in the industry like Virgin." 

Last month, a Virgin Atlantic [VA.UL] jumbo jet flew from London to Amsterdam powered partly by biofuel. It was the world's first such commercial flight. Virgin founder Richard Branson called the flight "a vital breakthrough," and Solena's Do said Branson had already expressed interest in his product. 

"Last week Sir Richard Branson made a statement to our partner, Rentech , that whatever we make they will buy it all," Do said. 

Solena collects gases such as methane from decomposing municipal waste and liquefies it for use as jet fuel. Burning the fuel produces carbon emissions but the process of collecting and producing it stops greenhouse gases from the waste from entering the environment. 

U.S. airlines trade group the Air Transport Association says on its Web site that it supports the development of alternative fuels, but believes that coal-to-liquid technology is most promising. 

Do said coal-to-liquid fuels would decrease the industry's dependence on crude oil but would produce more greenhouse gases than petroleum-based fuel. 

To drive demand from U.S. airlines, Do said that Washington, D.C.-based Solena would focus on making its product cheaper than jet fuel made from traditional fossil fuels. Already, he said, the company can produce bio jet fuel for $2 a gallon, while the current price for traditional jet fuel is about $3 a gallon. 

Should the price of traditional jet fuel drop, however, Do wants federal subsidies to help make sure his product stays cost competitive. 

"With additional tax incentives we will be able to make sure we are sustainable" even if the price of jet fuel drops sharply, he said. 

Solena expects to begin construction on its $250 million plant in Gilroy, California in early 2009, but it won't begin producing jet fuel until 2011. 

The plant, which is being built on the site of an existing landfill, is expected to produce 1,800 barrels of biofuel a day, 70 percent of which will be jet fuel. By comparison, U.S. airlines buy about 1.3 million barrels of jet fuel a day, while the U.S. Air Force buys 300,000 barrels a day. 

"It's a drop in the bucket," Do said. "But obviously we have got to start somewhere."


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## nomarandlee

*MISC | Biofuels Become Aviation's Big Focus*



> http://news.yahoo.com/s/aviation/20...onsbigfocus;_ylt=AjKb8vOCU39ejfptwVjlz5.s0NUE
> 
> *Biofuels Become Aviation's Big Focus *
> 
> Thu Jun 26, 6:46 PM ET
> 
> As concerns about global warming intensify throughout the world, aviation is receiving a disproportionate level of scrutiny for its contribution to total global production of greenhouse gases.
> 
> Even though aviation emits only about one-ninth as much carbon dioxide (CO2) as do motor vehicles, its high-visibility nature as an activity, its rapid growth as an industry and the fact that aviation emits most of its CO2 and particulate emissions in the upper atmosphere has made it a particular target for environmentalists.
> 
> 
> *Elizabeth Barratt-Brown, a senior attorney with the National Resources Defense Council, told last week's Eco-Aviation Conference in Washington, D.C. that in the United States, unless the industry achieves enormous efficiency increases, "by 2050 aviation emissions are expected to almost equal the amount from automobiles" because of aviation's growth.* The event, sponsored by Air Transport World magazine and Leeham Company, was the first aviation environmental forum to be held in the United States.
> 
> 
> Luckily for Earth, perhaps, the soaring price of oil has made the search for sustainable, CO2-neutral alternatives an immediate economic imperative as well as an environmentally critical focus for many human commercial activities - with aviation foremost among them. *Economic experts are now viewing high oil prices as a long-term fact of life rather than a short-term blip, and say aviation in its present form simply can't live with the possibility of the price of a barrel of oil leveling at $200. *
> 
> Research into fossil-fuel alternatives is snowballing.* Eventually, a clean fuel such as hydrogen may be the answer for aviation - but the technologies that will allow it to be used safely and economically to power large aircraft are generally regarded as being 40 or more years away. *
> 
> *For aviation, it increasingly appears that biofuels - jet fuels made from plants or algae using any one of a variety of processes - represent by far the best medium-to-long-term hope for the economic and environmental survival of the industry.* One of the main advantages of biofuels is that the plants used to make the fuels need lots of CO2 to grow, potentially making it possible for the aviation industry to achieve true carbon-neutrality.
> 
> 
> "Boeing Commercial Airplanes and its partners are actively accelerating development of second-generation biofuels because they present an economically viable opportunity to sustainably power the world's commercial aircraft fleet," said Boeing in a recent briefing document entitled 'What is the future of jet fuel?'
> 
> 
> Aviation's 'proven track record'
> 
> 
> Aviation's "proven track record" in reducing its "carbon footprint" on a per-passenger basis already is excellent, with a 70 percent improvement in fuel-efficiency and CO2 emissions per passenger mile in the last 50 years, said Rolls-Royce senior environmental analyst Nuno Taborda.
> 
> 
> "Aviation spends relatively more than any other industry on CO2 reduction," he said. Others noted that during the last 30 years, the U.S. automobile industry did not improve the fuel-efficiency and CO2 emissions of its products at all.
> 
> 
> But civil aviation is only just starting. "The IATA (International Air Transport Association) goal is for a 25 percent emissions reduction per passenger by 2020," from an average of 4 kilograms of CO2 per 100 passenger kilometers to 3 kilograms, said Billy Glover, Boeing Commercial Airplanes' managing director of environmental strategy. In the U.S., "the Air Transport Association goal is for 30 percent by 2025." These goals do not include any positive effects from using sustainable biofuels which might be available by then, Glover added.
> 
> 
> Various partnerships have been established to foster the development of alternative fuels and other ways to improve aviation's environmental efficiency. It is one area on which Airbus and Boeing cooperate willingly. One leading forum is the Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative (CAAFI), which includes partners from the aviation industry, fuel suppliers, universities, and various U.S. government agencies.
> 
> 
> CAAFI has established a fuel-certification roadmap that envisages achieving certification of jet fuels made entirely from biomass-derived pure hydrogenated oils in 2013. CAAFI also has set several intermediate targets, beginning this year with the planned certification of a fuel made from a 50 percent blend of biomass-derived syngas and conventional jet fuel. (Syngas is a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen and is created from feedstock by the Fischer-Tropsch process, which was discovered in 1923. Syngas can be processed into jet fuels.)
> 
> 
> Finding the right biofuel feedstock
> 
> 
> Key to the entire aviation biofuel issue is just what type of biomass is most suitable for fuel production. Several vital issues must be taken into account. First is the density and energy content of the fuel: It must take up a sufficiently small space that it can be carried in an aircraft and, similarly, a given volume of the fuel must produce enough energy so that an aircraft can carry enough in its tanks to complete its flight.
> 
> 
> Second is the "carbon lifecycle" of the biofuel: that is, the net amount of CO2 produced during production and burning of the fuel, less the amount the biomass feedstock for the fuel absorbs while growing.
> 
> 
> Third is the amount of sulfur and other particulates produced. Fourth is the hugely sensitive political issue of making sure the land and biomass used to make biofuel does not reduce the amount of food available to humanity and the Earth's fauna.
> 
> 
> These considerations immediately rule out "first-generation biofuels" such as ethanol produced from corn and soybeans. Not only does ethanol not contain enough energy per unit volume to be suitable as an aviation fuel, but growing enough corn or soybeans to power all the world's airliners would require an area just about the size of the United States, according to Boeing. Nor does ethanol have suitable boiling and freezing points for aviation use.
> 
> Second-generation biofuels
> 
> Experts believe "second-generation biofuels" derived from the wood and nuts of plants such as Jatropha curcas (Barbados Nut) and babassu, which grow strongly in arid areas unsuitable as arable land and which (in jatropha's case) are poisonous anyway, represent a good interim solution.
> 
> These Latin American plants, as well as other flora such as switchgrass and salt-water-tolerant plants known as halocytes (among them marsh grasses found in parts of the Middle East), could be grown for fuel production in non-arable areas suited to their particular growth requirements. Different parts of the world would grow different biofuel-producing plants, depending on their local climatic and soil conditions.
> 
> However, there is a problem: Although their oils offer much higher energy content and much better boiling/freezing-temperature characteristics than ethanol, these plants wouldn't yield enough oil per hectare to be able to serve the aviation industry's fuel requirements unless, again, very large areas were given over to their cultivation.
> 
> *Algae a likely long-term answer
> 
> There is broad consensus throughout the industry that, longer-term, algae represent the optimum solution to aviation's fuel needs.* A number of basic problems need to be solved, such as ensuring enough light gets to every part of an algae tank to enable all the cells to grow properly; and drying algae cells sufficiently to enable the oil they contain to be extracted and cracked into jet fuel.
> 
> But Boeing and Airbus are confident these problems can be solved - and the benefits that algae offers as a "third-generation biofuel" are immense. *Algae can produce an oil yield 15 times that of second-generation biofuel plants: **The world's entire airliner fleet could be powered from a cultivated area just the size of West Virginia, or Belgium, says Boeing. *
> 
> Additionally, because algae can be grown in tanks anywhere, biofuel-producing algae farms could be sited next to facilities producing jet fuel from coal or natural gas using the Fischer-Tropsch process. These "coal-to-liquid" or "gas-to-liquid" processes generate large amounts of CO2 from fossil fuels, making them unsuitable as sustainable fuel sources. However, if the CO2 they generate is piped off and used to grow algae in nearby farms, the two forms of fuel production together could create an efficient, carbon-neutral symbiosis for jet fuel production.
> 
> The Top 10 Modern Airliners
> B-1B Flies Supersonic on Synthetic Fuel
> Image Gallery: NASA Dryden Flight Tests
> Original Story: Biofuels Become Aviation's Big Focus
> Visit Aviation.com, the new one-stop destination for business fliers, commercial travelers, industry analysts and aviation buffs.


..


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## hkskyline

*JAL, Boeing, Pratt & Whitney To Conduct Biofuel Test Flight *
23 June 2008

TOKYO (Dow Jones)-- Japan Airlines Corp. (9205.TO) said Monday it will conduct a demonstration flight using biofuel, together with U.S. aircraft giant Boeing (BA) and jet engine maker Pratt & Whitney, to accelerate development of engines powered by alternative fuels amid surging jet fuel costs.

JAL is the fourth airline to hold such a test flight with Boeing, following Virgin Atlantic, Air New Zealand and Continental Airlines, a JAL official said. New Zealand and Continental are preparing for biofuel flights. Virgin Atlantic has already conducted a demonstration, the JAL official said.

Global airlines are facing a tough business environment as they are forced to raise fuel surcharges to deal with soaring fuel prices. But the higher charges could reduce demand for flights.

JAL doesn't know yet how much biofuels could save it in terms of its fuel bill, "but, we are joining (this project) as we expect they could lower costs," the official said.

In the test flight, JAL will use biofuel derived from nonfood crops mixed with jet fuel in one of the four engines powering a Pratt & Whitney-equipped Boeing 747-300, the airline said in a release.

The biofuel to be used has not been decided yet.

The Japanese airline will provide the aircraft and crew for the one-hour flight out of an airport in Japan scheduled for the end of this fiscal year ending March 2009.


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## p5archit

Biofuels are not that much cleaner, nor should they be considered the answer to our fuel problems. You still get greenhouse gas emissions from bio-fuels, not to mention they require so much land mass in order to grow the products to make the fuels. Not to mention, drive up food prices, and decimate food resources the world over, just so we can continue to live our lives more or less the way we are accustomed- wasteful!

Interestingly, I was thinking just the other day about why airlines haven't pushed harder for more innovative fuel technology research than they are? It would be in their collective interest to make fuel innovation and R&D their top priority, especially considering they are hemorrhaging money as we speak (since 911, something like $150 billion est.) due primarily to fuel costs, but no only of course. 

At the rate we are going now, in 10-20 years there will be around 10 airlines left and they will serve everyone, or not, depends on where you live and how wealthy you are...

I want to see innovation in engines and fuels, and well, future of flying and I don't want to see more BS solutions like biofuels!!!

p5


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## FM 2258

I'm gonna miss the smell of burning jet fuel while sitting on the tarmac and waiting at the taxi ways but I think the future is in hydrogen produced from renewable energy. 


I don't think airlines have pushed for the research because things didn't really get worse until a few years ago. I remember looking at $2.09 gas and going "wow, that's expensive." Now I see $3.99 and I'm like "God Damn that's expensive" as I drive less.


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## urbanfan89

> I'm gonna miss the smell of burning jet fuel while sitting on the tarmac and waiting at the taxi ways


Instead, all the airports will smell like McDonalds.:lol::lol:

But then they will become a lot quieter soon once the global aviation industry starts disintegrating. Everyone else will take cross-country railway trips instead.hno::lol::nuts:


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## hkskyline

Airlines are not in the business of optimizing engine designs. That's for the likes of Airbus and Boeing to figure out. The best airlines can do is reduce the amount of inputs to get the plane airborne, and alternative fuels research is one such step.


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## hkskyline

*AIRSHOW-Airline crisis boosts biofuel drive *

FARNBOROUGH, England, July 16 (Reuters) - Algae and nuts are among the alternative sources of fuel being considered by an increasingly skittish aviation industry as an alternative to petroleum, whose price rises threaten airlines with bankruptcy.

With oil prices poised to break through the $150 a barrel barrier, biofuels based on sources of energy like these no longer seem far-fetched -- but they will take years to develop and no-one will be flying in a farm-fuelled jet any time soon.

Discussion about potential alternatives to help airlines cope with high fuel prices and meet environmental requirements buzzed round the chalets at the Farnborough air show this week, as aerospace firms vied to show off their green credentials.

Environmentalists, however, said it was empty talk.

"At $70 a barrel, people were saying 'it is never going to happen'. At $150 a barrel, it starts to look interesting," said Ric Parker, Rolls-Royce's research and technology head.

The British engine maker said this week it was starting a scientific test programme with British Airways to investigate alternative aviation fuels.

"There is some realisation that the industry needs to be proactive .. and if they aren't then we'll be forced by governments to be proactive," said Paul Adams, senior vice president of engineering at U.S. rival Pratt & Whitney.

European Union lawmakers recently approved a deal to include aviation, which they say generates 3 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, from 2012 in the EU's Emission Trading Scheme. The airline industry has criticised the move as a costly burden.

"(For) the people who figure out how to make (alternative fuels) work, it will be a very profitable thing for them in the long term," Adams said.

Grand schemes for alternative fuels have been in incubation for years, with research progressing slowly as the aviation industry requires a fuel with greater specifications than the rest of the transport sector -- including low freezing points.

But high oil prices and concerns over pollution have forced the industry to step up their efforts towards finding a sustainable and economically viable alternative to oil-based kerosene, which has doubled in price over the past year.

Another factor driving research is the strategic desire for fuel independence, especially in the United States.

The U.S. Air Force aims to have at least a 50/50 blend of jet fuel and synthetic fuel on all aircraft by 2017, spokesman Gary Strasburg said in an emailed statement.

So far synthetic fuels based on non-renewable sources such as gas and coal have the edge over plant-based biofuels.

European planemaker Airbus this year flew one of its A380 superjumbos using synthetic fuel from natural gas, known as gas-to-liquid, which is almost free of sulphur, can be used with current engines and could be available soon.

FOOD COMPETITION

Biofuels, currently mainly produced from crops such as grain, vegetable oils and sugar, are seen by advocates as a better alternative fuel since they could cut emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

Nuts from Amazon rainforests helped fuel the world's first commercial airline flight partly powered by renewable energy earlier this year.

Critics say an expansion in the area of crops grown for energy has helped drive up food prices, and some scientists have questioned the environmental benefits of so-called first-generation biofuels.

"The real environmental improvement will come with bio-to-liquid, but the difficulty is not to compete with the food chain," said Axel Krein, Airbus' senior vice president for research and technology.

Using algae is an option because it would not compete with human food needs, contains a lot of energy and uses less area than crops, he said. Still, "significant and meaningful" quantities of biofuels would not be available before 2015-2020.

Airbus chief Tom Enders said it would take time to replace kerosene, adding that a 30 percent cut by 2030 was possible.

Environmental group Greenpeace is sceptical. "Alternative fuels are a pipe dream", campaigner Anna Jones said.

"The idea that alternative fuels will solve climate change sometime in the distant future is just a distraction when we need to start slashing our emissions now," Jones added.

Improved engine design could deliver greater savings and contribute more to reducing carbon emissions than alternative fuels, Charles Alcock, of Aviation International News, said.

Planemakers say they have reduced aircraft fuel burn and carbon dioxide emissions by 70 percent and noise by 75 percent since the early 1970s, mainly through new technology.


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## hkskyline

*Green fuel for the airline industry*
The airline industry's insatiable demand for fuel is bad news for the environment
But can biofuels provide the solution 
16 August 2008
New Scientist

IF YOU have become addicted to the fly-cheap philosophy espoused by budget airlines over the last decade, it could be time to rethink your travel plans. Airlines now find themselves facing a crude oil price that has doubled to more than $140 a barrel in just 12 months, pushing fuel costs to record levels. Around 10 small carriers have already gone under, and the industry as a whole is expected to lose $40 billion this year. Airlines are being forced to slash capacity and merge, and the knock-on effects for passengers are obvious: "Our customers must ultimately compensate us for the costs we incur flying them around," warned Gerard Arpey, chairman of American Airlines, at an airline industry conference in June. With analysts predicting a further leap to $200 a barrel by 2010, there is no relief in sight.

Yet as bad as things look, the soaring cost of oil is not the biggest problem the industry and its passengers face. More fundamental is the need to replace kerosene with another source of energy altogether, for two pressing reasons.

First, the airline industry is turning out to be the cuckoo in the nest of carbon reduction. The UK, for instance, is now legally bound to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 60 per cent to 65 million tonnes a year by 2050, but under the government's "best case" projection, the country's aviation industry alone will emit 15.7 million tonnes that year, almost a quarter of the economy's entire carbon ration. According to experts at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change near Norwich, UK, if additional indirect impacts of aviation - such as the effect of contrails - are taken into account, that figure could rise to over 100 per cent. Neither scenario is sustainable.

Second, aviation is uniquely vulnerable to the consequences of peak oil - the point at which global oil production begins its inevitable decline. Whereas land-based transport could in theory be completely electrified, powered by batteries charged from renewable sources, there is no alternative to energy-dense liquid fuels for jet engines. There is a growing consensus that global oil production will peak in the next decade or so and then go into terminal decline. Some analysts believe it already has: output has been essentially flat since 2005 despite soaring demand, which is why the price is heading skyward. Even the traditionally optimistic International Energy Agency now foresees an oil "supply crunch" from 2012. For airlines the problem could soon be not just whether they can afford jet fuel, but whether there is enough of it to go round.

If airlines are to have any chance of staying aloft in a post-peak, carbon-rationed world, they must quickly find an alternative fuel with low emissions that also matches the stiff technical standards of jet kerosene. Because planes have to lift their fuel into the sky and carry it for the entire journey, this fuel has to be energy dense. Because they fly at high altitude, it needs to remain fluid at -50 °C. Because they fly long distances, chemically identical supplies must be available all over the world. And because airliners have long lives, the new fuel must be compatible with the existing fleet. What's needed, in other words, is an exact replica of old-fashioned jet kerosene - a so-called "drop-in" replacement - that also emits substantially less CO2 per unit of energy. "Meeting all these conflicting demands is a very tall order," says Mike Farmery, global fuel technical and quality manager at Shell Aviation. "There are lots of exciting ideas, but it will be hard to achieve quickly." So what are our alternatives?

Veggie power

Until recently it was widely thought that using biofuels like bioethanol or biodiesel in aviation was a non-starter. Scientists have known since the 1940s how to turn vegetable oil into biodiesel using a process called transesterification, in which the oil is processed using alcohol and an acid catalyst. This produces fuels that work well on the ground but not at altitude: the natural freezing point of such oils is too high, so they would congeal at 33,000 feet. They also contain too much oxygen, which adds weight but not energy content.

However, it now seems those technical problems have been cracked. Finnish oil company Neste has devised a way to produce an oxygen-free biodiesel called NExBTL, which could in theory be used to make jet fuel. Neste already has two plants manufacturing NExBTL and has another two in the pipeline.

Meanwhile in February 2008, airline Virgin Atlantic conducted a test flight using a biofuel made from coconut and babassu oil produced by Imperium Renewables, a Seattle-based company that has developed a patented method of reducing the freezing point. A second test flight with an Air New Zealand plane is planned later this year.

The problem with so-called first-generation biofuels - made using conventional fermentation and distillation procedures from wheat, say - remains the amount of feedstock and land required. During Virgin's test flight from London to Amsterdam, the Boeing 747 consumed 22 tonnes of fuel, of which only 5 per cent was neat biofuel. Producing even that much required the equivalent of 150,000 coconuts, says Brian Young, Imperium's director of international business development. Had this single flight been run entirely on biofuel, it would have consumed 3 million coconuts - an astronomical number that highlights the scale of the problem. However, Virgin and its partners Boeing and GE stressed that the flight was simply a "proof of concept", and accepted that producing useful amounts of fuel would require "next generation" feedstocks: those made from non-food crops, waste biomass or by converting existing fuels to liquid form.

One option, which Virgin's Richard Branson suggested at the launch of his airline's test flight, would be to produce fuel from the nuts of Jatropha curcas . This hardy bush grows in the tropics on relatively poor land with little water or fertiliser, so it needn't displace food production. However, the amount of land required to fuel the world's jet planes would still be prodigious .

Aviation currently consumes around 5 million barrels of jet fuel per day, or 238 million tonnes per year. On current Jatropha yields - 1.7 tonnes of oil per hectare - replacing that would take 1.4 million square kilometres, well over twice the size of France. To put this in context, D1 Oils, the British company pioneering biofuel from Jatropha in countries such as India, Zambia and Indonesia, plans to plant 10,000 km2 over the next four years.

If vegetable oil looks likely to remain in short supply, another approach would be to make jet fuel from plant material using the Fischer-Tropsch chemical process developed in Germany in the 1920s. Originally designed to produce synthetic diesel from coal, the Fischer-Tropsch process also works with a wide range of organic matter. The feedstock is heated without oxygen to create a synthetic gas that is then converted to high-quality liquid fuels using high temperatures and iron-based catalysts. This makes it possible to create a synthetic jet fuel that is indistinguishable from conventional kerosene. Depending on the feedstock, the fuel could in principle have very low carbon emissions and not compete with food production. Unfortunately, though, all the feedstocks have significant drawbacks.

For example, Fischer-Tropsch jet fuel is already produced from coal by Sasol in South Africa, and planes refuelling in Johannesburg get a half-and-half blend of kerosene and coal-to-liquids (CTL) fuel. The problem with CTL is that life-cycle emissions are roughly double those of kerosene, making CTL-powered aviation even more damaging to the climate.

The Fischer-Tropsch process also works with natural gas. Gas-to-liquids (GTL) jet fuel was tested by Airbus and Shell earlier this year. Well-to-wing emissions are lower than CTL, yet no better than conventional kerosene, because the Fischer Tropsch process itself consumes so much energy. According to Airbus's rival Boeing, GTL jet fuel emits 1.5 times as much CO2 as kerosene.

The only realistic hope of producing Fischer-Tropsch jet fuel with substantially lower emissions is to use some form of plant material such as wood or straw as the feedstock - so-called biomass-to-liquids, or BTL - as championed by the German company Choren, which plans to start full-scale production by 2012. The company boldly proclaims a vision of "potentially infinite production of renewable energy", but a closer look at the numbers suggests the real outlook will be more modest.

In a presentation at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi in January, Choren CEO Tom Blades said the company's BTL fuel could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 91 per cent, and insisted it would not compete with food production. One reason for this is that a large proportion of the feedstock will come from waste construction timber and existing forestry - initially. However, Blades acknowledged that further BTL expansion would require increasing amounts of specially grown "energy crops" such as willow or miscanthus. Supplies of waste timber aren't expected to grow, so within 10 years, more than half of Choren's feedstock will need to come from energy crops, again raising the issue of land use.

Food not fuel

Blades cites the EU's Biomass Action Plan report of December 2005, which suggests that Europe has the potential to produce around 100 million tonnes of energy crops annually by 2030, and that total available biomass, including waste and forestry contributions, could amount to 315 million tonnes. Since Choren's BTL process takes 5 tonnes of dry biomass to produce a tonne of fuel, this would produce just over 60 million tonnes of fuel per year. That sounds a lot until you remember that in 2006 the EU consumed more than 700 million tonnes of crude. "We're not replacing oil," Blades admits, "just making it last a little bit longer."

In the context of global aviation, the numbers are even more daunting. Meeting today's global demand for jet fuel from BTL would require - assuming the average crop yields 10 tonnes of biomass per hectare - nearly 1.2 million km2. That's well over three times the size of Germany, and makes no allowance for the predicted rapid growth in aviation. On the same assumptions, replacing all current transport fuel with BTL would require more than 10 million km2 - an area bigger than China. This demolishes any claim that second-generation biofuels wouldn't have to compete with food production.

The one remaining alternative for low-emission jet fuel that doesn't compete with agriculture are algae, which can be grown in ponds of seawater built on non-productive land. Given the right conditions, some species multiply quickly and produce oil, which can then be extracted and refined. It is widely agreed that such a system could take up less space and deliver much higher yields than oil crops such as palm or Jatropha - although quite how much higher is still controversial.

The technology itself is not new. Ami Ben-Amotz, a senior scientist at Israel's National Institute of Oceanography in Haifa, has been farming algae commercially for more than 20 years to produce beta-carotene food supplements for the Japanese market. In 2004 he founded a new company, Seambiotic, to produce algae for biofuel at a coal-fired power station on the coast at Ashkelon.

It is an undeniably neat arrangement. Warm water from the power station's cooling system is diverted through the ponds before returning to the sea. Meanwhile flue gas from the station's chimney supplies CO2 to feed the algae, and energy for pumping and harvesting is available at minimal cost. The harvested algae are then reduced to a concentrated paste and mixed with solvents to separate the oil, which can be turned into biofuel by transesterification. Seambiotic is delighted with the results and aims to complete a larger, 50,000-square-metre pond on the site by the end of the year. Ben-Amotz says that refineries could offer similar opportunities.

Algae have stirred up huge excitement, not only because they have the potential to help mop up CO2 emissions, but also because of the sheer amount of fuel they might produce. Shell, which is building a pilot facility in Hawaii, claims algae could be 15 times as productive as traditional biofuel crops. Boeing believes algae could produce 85 to 170 tonnes per hectare per year (10,000 to 20,000 US gallons per acre per year), yielding all the world's jet fuel in an area the size of Belgium. Yet the scientists who have done most research into algae production look askance at such claims.

The fundamental problem, explains Al Darzins, who coordinates alga research at the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, is that although algae grow very quickly, most of their biomass is usually carbohydrate. To trigger a higher proportion of oil, you have to stress the algae in some way - starve them of nutrients such as nitrogen, say - which in turn limits their growth rate. As a result, Darzins thinks 42 tonnes per hectare is a more realistic target.

Ben-Amotz is even more cautious. To grow algae cheaply means using open ponds, which are prone to invasion by local alga species that do not produce oil, or by predatory micro-organisms. There are also the day-to-day problems of keeping temperature and salinity constant, so theoretical levels of productivity are hard to maintain on large scales and over the long term. "If people say it's possible, let them show me," Ben-Amotz says. "But usually they only show me a bucketful."

With over 20 years' production experience, Ben-Amotz is convinced that the maximum practical yield is 25 grams of biomass per square metre per day, of which 40 per cent might be oil. That equates to about 36 tonnes per hectare per year, meaning that to replace current jet fuel consumption would take about 65,000 km2, roughly the area of Ireland. Massively better than BTL, but still enormous.

Nevertheless there is intense interest in algal jet fuel in both civil and military aviation - hardly surprising, since jet fuel eats almost 60 per cent of the US Department of Defense's annual fuel bill, burning up over $6 billion in 2006. America's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is sponsoring research into ways to produce JP-8 military jet fuel from crop oils, including algae. The target is to produce a fuel that achieves at least 60 per cent conversion efficiency from the crop oil to jet fuel, eventually rising to 90 per cent, all for less than $3 per gallon. Three contractors will deliver fuel samples this autumn, and DARPA is assessing proposals for further research.

Algal jet fuel also has its fans in civil aviation, including Virgin and Boeing, which is no surprise since it seems to offer the best bet in a gamble where the stakes are literally sky-high: nothing less than the survival of aviation as we know it. However, the main concern may not be space so much as time. At the launch of the Virgin biofuel test flight, Branson suggested that algae might produce enough fuel for the entire airline industry, and that such technological breakthroughs represented the only chance of mitigating peak oil, which he said could arrive within six years. But when asked if fuels like Jatropha or algae could be ready by then, he did not sound so confident: "We have to try our best to make them available as fast as we possibly can."

David Strahan is the author of The Last Oil Shock: A survival guide to the imminent extinction of petroleum man , published by John Murray


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## hkskyline

*It's not easy flying green *
9 August 2008
The Sydney Morning Herald

Clive Dorman explains why airlines want alternative fuel as badly as their customers.

Behind the news about oil prices and climate change, the airline business is fighting a rearguard action to save its reputation.

Somehow - and the industry doesn't understand why - the aviation industry has earned a reputation among environmental groups as one of the dirtiest and most dangerous polluters on the planet.

The Greens movement in Europe wants airlines grounded. People should holiday at home - anything but travel by air, which is just a pastime for the rich, they say.

The strength of the Greens lobby is Europe's radical emissions trading scheme, which singles out airlines for punishment, the industry says.

"The uneducated general public finds us an easy target to shoot at," Scott Carson, the chief of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, lamented recently.

"What we need to do is stop talking to ourselves and reach out."

Standing alongside him in a rare show of unity on the climate-change issue, Tom Enders, the chief of Carson's biggest competitor, Airbus, is more blunt.

"Politicians and environmentalists have a choice," he says. "They can continue to launch misguided proposals (such as the European emissions trading scheme) and return aviation to the elitist status airline travel had 50 years ago.

"Or they can work with us ... taxes don't make airlines more efficient."

The aircraft makers and airlines are in a jam.

On the one hand, their greenhouse emissions are relatively insignificant. Air travel contributes just 1.5 per cent of global greenhouse emissions (and only 1 per cent of Australia's emissions), a fraction of the emissions of land transport, which contributes about 14 per cent.

According to figures that Qantas produced for Australia's Garnaut Review on Climate Change earlier this year, air travel on average uses 3.5 litres of fuel per passenger per 100 kilometres, the same as for a small, ultra-fuel-efficient car, but at eight to nine times the speed.

However, air travel is growing rapidly, tripling in volume every 20 years on average.

And, unlike the alternative fuels now emerging for land transport, the airline industry is stuck with kerosene because none of the alternatives tested so far has the energy output required to power jet engines.

Carson and Enders got together at last month's Farnborough air show in Britain to plead with governments planning to raise billions of dollars in environmental taxes to sink at least some of that into research on new fuels.

In the past year, driven as never before by oil prices, the entire aviation industry - airlines and plane and engine makers - has ratcheted up the search for new fuels to fever pitch.

In February, Boeing for the first time flew an experimental light plane powered only by hydrogen fuel cells, which are emission-free, producing only heat and water as byproducts.

Fuel cells aren't yet seen as the solution for big aircraft but, in the past year, airlines and manufacturers have also tested in-flight various biofuels and low-emission liquefied gas.

Qantas' chief risk officer, Rob Kella, told the Garnaut Review: "Over the past 40 years, noise has been cut by 75 per cent, CO2 intensity has improved by 70 per cent and hydrocarbon and soot emissions have been almost eliminated."

But that's pedestrian compared with what the airlines want new technology to deliver in the next decade. Purely out of economic necessity - to wean themselves off the oil curse that has sent dozens of carriers to the wall in the past six months - the airlines want green flying as badly as their customers.


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## KIWIKAAS

Edit: already posted by Hkskyline


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## hkskyline

Unfortunately, it seems to be all talk and trials over the years and nothing prevalent across the industry yet. I was a bit surprised my first post on this topic goes back to 2006 already!


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## sponge_bob

hkskyline said:


> Unfortunately, it seems to be all talk and trials over the years and nothing prevalent across the industry yet.!


Todays news, more of the same. 

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-49449566



> *Passengers could soon be flying on planes fuelled by waste gases from steelworks.*
> 
> The plan involves using the gases from Tata's Port Talbot plant, which developers believe could be used for thousands of flights a year.
> 
> Tata, along with Neath Port Talbot council and American bioengineering firm LanzaTech are working on the plan.


If only hot air could move planes, eh!


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## hkskyline

* EU planning sustainable fuel target to cut airline emissions *
_Excerpt_

BRUSSELS/PARIS, Dec 9 (Reuters) - The European Commission is drawing up targets for airlines to use a minimum share of sustainable fuels, it said on Wednesday, after dropping a draft 5% goal for 2030 that it deemed too low.

The pledge came as the EU executive outlined measures to tackle transport's climate impact, including a goal previously reported by Reuters to have 30 million zero-emission vehicles on Europe's roads by 2030.

A late draft had included the 5% share of "renewable and low-carbon transport fuels" to be achieved by airlines in 2030, rising to above 60% in 2050. Both targets were cut from the final published version.

EU climate policy chief Frans Timmermans said the Commission now intended to set goals at a higher level for sustainable aviation fuel use.

"We will come out with an ambitious proposal later, because we thought we could do better than what was written in the initial draft," Timmermans said. 

More : EU planning sustainable fuel target to cut airline emissions


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## hkskyline

* Shell pulls out of joint venture to build UK sustainable jet fuels plant * 
The Guardian _Excerpt_
Jan 19, 2021

Shell has pulled out of a joint venture with British Airways and Velocys to build a flagship sustainable jet fuels plant in the UK – in a blow to Boris Johnson’s claims that Britain could deliver the world’s first zero-emission long-haul flight.

The oil firm was named last year as one of the top companies set to “turbocharge government plans” for sustainable aviation fuels, the centrepiece of the so-called “jet zero” plan to decarbonise flights.

Shell said it would leave the Altalto project, to be built in Immingham, Humberside, days after the company agreed to join a project in Canada which plans to produce more than double the green fuel from less than half the waste.

Shell’s departure was by mutual consent, and the project would continue “according to its existing development plan”, the three parties behind the project said. Immingham could begin supplying its first aviation fuel from non-recyclable household waste within five years.

More : Shell pulls out of joint venture to build UK sustainable jet fuels plant


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## hkskyline

* Boeing says its fleet will be able to fly on 100% biofuel by 2030 * 
_Excerpt_
Jan 23, 2021

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Boeing Co said on Friday it will begin delivering commercial airplanes capable of flying on 100% biofuel by the end of the decade, calling reducing environmental damage from fossil fuels the “challenge of our lifetime.”

Boeing’s goal - which requires advances to jet systems, raising fuel-blending requirements, and safety certification by global regulators - is central to a broader industry target of slashing carbon emissions in half by 2050, the U.S. planemaker said.

“It’s a tremendous challenge, it’s the challenge of our lifetime,” Boeing Director of Sustainability Strategy Sean Newsum told Reuters. “Aviation is committed to doing its part to reduce its carbon footprint.”

More : Boeing says its fleet will be able to fly on 100% biofuel by 2030


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## hkskyline

*Qantas and BP unveil strategic partnership to reduce carbon emissions * 
_Excerpt_

SYDNEY, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Qantas Airways Ltd and BP PLC on Thursday announced a strategic partnership to reduce carbon emissions in the aviation sector in Australia as part of their goals to become carbon neutral companies by 2050.

The agreement, along with Air New Zealand Ltd on Thursday backing the New Zealand government's decision to implement a biofuels mandate to cut carbon emissions in the transport sector, is a sign that the coronavirus pandemic has not killed long-term industry environmental goals.

Qantas and BP said they will jointly explore opportunities and projects in areas including advanced sustainable fuels, advocacy for further decarbonisation in the aviation sector, renewable power solutions and generation, carbon management and emerging technology.

"This is another move towards our ambition to be a net zero company by 2050 or sooner and help the world to get to net zero," BP Australia President Frederic Baudry said.

Qantas said the pandemic had not changed its target of becoming net carbon neutral by 2050 and even though it had been flying less, the same proportion of customers had been choosing to purchase emissions offsets.

More : Qantas and BP unveil strategic partnership to reduce carbon emissions


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## hkskyline

*BA plans transatlantic flights partially fuelled by recycled waste in 2022 *
The Guardian _Excerpt_
Feb 9, 2021

British Airways says it will operate transatlantic flights partially powered by sustainable fuels as early as next year.

BA will invest in a new US plant to be built in Georgia by LanzaJet producing commercial-scale volumes of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), made from ethanol derived from agricultural and other waste.

The airline said the fuel would create 70% less carbon emissions than conventional jet fuel.

However, it is likely to only provide a tiny fraction of BA’s overall fuel needs at first. SAF can be used to substitute for up to 50% of conventional jet fuel but so far demonstration flights – such as one conducted in 2018 by Virgin Atlantic with LanzaTech (from which LanzaJet was spun off) – have blended only about 5% of the greener fuel.

BA’s owner, IAG, which has pledged to invest almost £300m in SAF as part of its pledge to decarbonise by 2050, said it would investigate building a refinery with LanzaTech in the UK, as well as a waste-to-fuel plant in partnership with Velocys.

More : BA plans transatlantic flights partially fuelled by recycled waste in 2022


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## hkskyline

* European aviation maps flight path to carbon neutrality *
_Excerpt_
Feb 11, 2021

BRUSSELS, Feb 11 (Reuters) - Europe's aviation sector on Thursday laid out how it could eliminate its net carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, a commitment it said would depend on policy support to scale up sustainable fuels and breakthrough technologies.

Airlines hit by the coronavirus travel slump are also facing increased scrutiny from policymakers and the public over their environmental impact, as the European Union seeks to cut its economy-wide net greenhouse gas output to zero by 2050.

A study backed by airlines, airports, plane manufacturers and air navigation providers said the industry can cut its net CO2 emissions to zero by 2050 from flights within and departing from the European Economic Area, Britain and Switzerland.

"Whilst we embrace our responsibilities, it's clear we cannot do this alone," said Olivier Jankovec, director general at airports' organisation ACI Europe, which published the report along with Airlines for Europe, manufacturers' grouping ASD, air traffic control body CANSO and regional airline association ERA.

"We need the EU to deliver the policy and regulatory framework that will enable us to deliver net zero," Jankovec said.

More : European aviation maps flight path to carbon neutrality


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## hkskyline

* Airline CEOs urge White House support for greener aviation fuel * 
_Excerpt_ 

WASHINGTON, Feb 26 (Reuters) - The CEOs of American Airlines , United Airlines and Delta Air Lines and other airline officials met virtually with White House officials Friday to discuss tackling aviation pollution and urge U.S. support for greener aviation fuel.

United Chief Executive Scott Kirby made clear the carrier was fully committed to confronting the climate crisis and sought White House support for "incentives for sustainable aviation fuel and carbon capture in the forthcoming economic stimulus proposal," the airline said in a statement.

White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy, economic adviser Brian Deese and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg took part in the meeting, including discussion of using biofuels to power air travel and reduce carbon emissions. Reuters first reported the planned meeting.

U.S airlines and renewables companies have been lobbying the Biden administration to back a big increase in subsidies for lower-carbon aviation fuel, arguing new incentives are needed to help fight climate change and will also make their recovery from the pandemic much greener.

The White House said in a statement the officials were "optimistic to hear airline leaders share information about the industry’s ongoing and future efforts to address climate change, and they offered the administration’s support to strengthen and advance the airlines’ climate goals."

More : Airline CEOs urge White House support for greener aviation fuel


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## hkskyline

* Delta to spend $30 mln to offset most of its 2020 impact on climate *
_Excerpt_

March 4 (Reuters) - Delta Air Lines said on Thursday it would spend more than $30 million to offset 13 million metric tons of carbon emissions over 10 months last year as part of its pledge to help combat climate change.

The Atlanta-based company said its medium-term goal is to replace 10% of its jet fuel, which is currently refined from fossil fuel, with sustainable aviation fuel by the end of 2030.

Delta also said it cut emissions by retiring more than 200 older aircraft early in 2020 as it dealt with a plunge in demand from the coronavirus pandemic. Replacement planes will be 25% more fuel-efficient, the U.S. airline said.

In February 2020, Delta announced plans to invest $1 billion over the next decade in initiatives like offsets, sustainable aviation fuel and carbon sequestration that would limit the impact of global air travel on the environment, the first airline to make a commitment of that scale.

That followed moves in Europe by easyJet to offset emissions on all its flights and by British Airways and Air France to do the same on their domestic flights.

Source : Delta to spend $30 million to offset most of its 2020 impact on climate


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## hkskyline

* Airbus tells EU hydrogen won't be widely used in planes before 2050 *
_Excerpt_ 

PARIS, June 10 (Reuters) - Most airliners will rely on traditional jet engines until at least 2050, with the introduction of zero-emissions hydrogen limited to regional and short-range planes, Airbus told European Union officials in a briefing released on Thursday.

The planemaker has emerged as the industry's leading champion for hydrogen propulsion, saying it plans to develop the world's first zero-emission commercial aircraft by 2035.

It has not publicly said whether the technology will be ready in time for the European industry's next major milestone - a replacement for the medium-haul A320 in the 2030s - but February's briefing to EU officials appeared to rule this out.

More : Airbus tells EU hydrogen won't be widely used in planes before 2050


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## hkskyline

* Hydrogen planes, electric propulsion and new regulations: Aviation is changing *
CNBC _Excerpt_ 
June 15, 2021

From the Wright brothers’ historic flight in 1903 to the development of supersonic aircraft, the history of aviation has been driven by technology and ambition.

Now, as the 21st century progresses, the sector continues to show its appetite for innovation and radical design.

Last September, for instance, a hydrogen fuel-cell plane capable of carrying passengers took to the skies over England for its maiden flight.

More : Hydrogen planes, electric propulsion and new regulations: Aviation is changing


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## hkskyline

* Chevron to sell test batch of sustainable aviation fuel to Delta Air *
Reuters_Excerpt_
Sep 8, 2021

Chevron Corp plans to produce a test batch of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and sell it to Delta Air Lines at the Los Angeles International Airport, the companies said on Tuesday.

The move is part of a partnership the companies announced with Alphabet Inc-owned Google to track SAF test batch emissions data using cloud-based technology.

Delta has pledged to replace 10% of its jet fuel with SAF by 2030. Sustainable aviation fuel is made from feedstocks such as used cooking oil and animal fat and can be three or four times more expensive than making traditional jet fuel.

More : Chevron to sell test batch of sustainable aviation fuel to Delta Air


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## hkskyline

* Global Aviation’s Best Shot at Going Green Relies on Scarce Fuel *
Bloomberg _Excerpt_
Sept 20, 2022

In Tuas, Singapore’s industrial-heavy district, Finnish company Neste Oyj is building what will one day be the world’s largest facility for sustainable aviation fuel.

Once up and running in 2023, the plant should produce 1 million metric tons a year — a decent amount, but still less than 0.3% of annual global jet fuel demand. What little there is will be expensive: SAF costs as much as five times as traditional jet fuel, itself coming off a 14-year peak.

This is a problem for the airline industry, which is counting on sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, as a critical component in its efforts to decarbonize. As of now, airlines contribute more than 2% of the world’s carbon emissions and lag almost all other sectors in pledges for a cleaner future.

More : Global Aviation’s Best Shot at Going Green Relies on Scarce Fuel


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## hkskyline

* Mexican airline Volaris exploring sustainable fuel options *
_Excerpt_

MEXICO CITY, Dec 9 (Reuters) - Mexican low-cost carrier Volaris is exploring options to obtain sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), including a potential deal in the United States, the airline's top executive said in an interview following the company's investor day.

"We have to work on developing supply in Mexico," Chief Executive Enrique Beltranena told Reuters, adding that the airline had flown with sustainable fuel just once, a flight from Germany to Mexico, because of the lack of local availability.

"Really, SAF is an ethanol. And what we don't have in Mexico is a way of converting that ethanol, of mixing it to become jet fuel," he said.

More : Mexican airline Volaris exploring sustainable fuel options


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