Biofuel Takes Flight

Maybe you support the goals of green fuel. But maybe you’d give it a second thought at 35,000 feet, flying in a plane partially powered by algae.

The International Air Transport Association is hoping to achieve “carbon neutral growth” by 2020. To get there scientists and aviation experts are looking for the best biofuel. Over the past two years, a handful of airlines have used coconut, jatropha, and camelina oils in a series of short test flights. While it could be years before bio-jet fuels are integrated into airline travel, experts say the environmental impacts would be significant.

Preliminary results from an Air New Zealand test flight in December show that burning jatropha oil can cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 60 percent compared to conventional fuel. But the world’s airlines use sixty billion gallons of jet fuel every year, and Petroleum Week estimates that producing that much fuel from jatropha would require planting 1.4 million square kilometers of it, an area twice the size of France.

Here to tell us more is David Biello. He’s associate editor at Scientific American and wrote about the greening of aviation for Yale Environment 360.

Yale Environment 360: For Greening Aviation, Are Biofuels The Right Stuff?

(Photo by Stephen Kallao via Flickr/Creative Commons)