Whole Travel Blog

Thursday, Continental Airlines announced the results of its January 7 biofuel demonstration flight. Not only was the flight successful, the biofuel showed approximately 1.1% greater fuel efficiency over traditional jet fuel. So, not only was the fuel made from renewable sources, it actually beat traditional fuel outright. This type of fuel is estimated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 60-80% as well.

Flying the greener skies

“We look forward to working with our partners as biofuels go through the certification process, and we hope to see these fuels proceed into commercial quantities in the near future,” said Leah Raney, Continental’s managing director of global environmental affairs. Hopefully it’s not long until we see all jet fuel from sustainable sources.

Committed to doing their part to fight global warming and reduce green house gas emissions, airplane manufacturers are vowing to become less oil dependent and transition to a 30% biofuel blend in the next three to five years. Boeing spokesperson Andrew Davis declared that, “the industry has signed up to a pledge of trying to gain carbon neutral growth, which we don’t claim at any point is an easy target to make but we have to have that kind of goal.”

The great news is that the planes won’t have to be rebuilt or altered in any way in order to use biofuels. However, the big challenge lies in fulfilling the huge demand of biofuel that’s needed to get planes green.

According to Boeing’s environmental expert, Darrin Morgan, “fueling the world’s 13,000 commercial planes with soya bean-based fuel, would require setting aside the equivalent of the entire land mass of Europe for soya bean production.”

Via The Guardian.