Dec 4, 2023 06:51 PM
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20231...-and-sugar
INTRO: As the politician next to him took out his phone for a selfie, Virgin Atlantic chairman Richard Branson peered into the camera, grinned, and did a double thumbs-up. The world's first commercial airliner to cross the Atlantic using 100% biofuel had just landed in New York.
Virgin Atlantic's Boeing 787 was powered not by fossil fuels, but plant sugars and waste fats – a form of so-called Sustainable Aviation Fuel, or SAF. A British Conservative MP posted his smiling selfie with Branson to the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, and declared the flight "a significant UK aviation achievement". (The flight was partly funded by the UK government.)
But not everyone is so sure that this represents the future of flying. The biomass required to make biofuel can come from a broad range of sources – plant material, food waste or even algae. While biofuels release CO2 when burned, some consider them a sustainable option because they are renewable and biomass removes some CO2 from the atmosphere as it grows.
The problem is the sheer volume of biomass needed to power an industry as fuel-hungry as aviation. One academic paper published in August estimated that, if you were to grow sugar cane and use that to make biofuels for commercial jets, you'd need 125 million hectares (482,000 sq miles) of land – roughly equivalent to the surface area of the states of California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada and Louisiana combined.
That's a lot of land. And if you tried using waste sources of biomass alone, you wouldn't have nearly enough to keep all the world's planes in the air, say some experts. The airline industry is currently responsible for about 3.5% of greenhouse gas emissions, roughly the same as the entire country of Japan, which is one of the world's highest emitters.
Proponents of SAF argue that the fuel could make flying much greener than it is currently. It's just that scaling SAF production up is a gigantic challenge... (MORE - details)
INTRO: As the politician next to him took out his phone for a selfie, Virgin Atlantic chairman Richard Branson peered into the camera, grinned, and did a double thumbs-up. The world's first commercial airliner to cross the Atlantic using 100% biofuel had just landed in New York.
Virgin Atlantic's Boeing 787 was powered not by fossil fuels, but plant sugars and waste fats – a form of so-called Sustainable Aviation Fuel, or SAF. A British Conservative MP posted his smiling selfie with Branson to the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, and declared the flight "a significant UK aviation achievement". (The flight was partly funded by the UK government.)
But not everyone is so sure that this represents the future of flying. The biomass required to make biofuel can come from a broad range of sources – plant material, food waste or even algae. While biofuels release CO2 when burned, some consider them a sustainable option because they are renewable and biomass removes some CO2 from the atmosphere as it grows.
The problem is the sheer volume of biomass needed to power an industry as fuel-hungry as aviation. One academic paper published in August estimated that, if you were to grow sugar cane and use that to make biofuels for commercial jets, you'd need 125 million hectares (482,000 sq miles) of land – roughly equivalent to the surface area of the states of California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada and Louisiana combined.
That's a lot of land. And if you tried using waste sources of biomass alone, you wouldn't have nearly enough to keep all the world's planes in the air, say some experts. The airline industry is currently responsible for about 3.5% of greenhouse gas emissions, roughly the same as the entire country of Japan, which is one of the world's highest emitters.
Proponents of SAF argue that the fuel could make flying much greener than it is currently. It's just that scaling SAF production up is a gigantic challenge... (MORE - details)
