ATAG's Steele: Airline Industry Needs Biofuel

by Aaron Karp (ATW) Air Transport Action Group Executive Director Paul Steele said the airline industry failing to achieve its stated goal of a 1.5% improvement in fuel efficiency/carbon dioxide emissions annually through 2020 and CO2-neutral growth beyond 2020 would "destroy our credibility." But he cautioned that the development of economically viable biofuel is essential for the industry to achieve its environmental goals.
Speaking on Thursday at ATW's 4th Annual Eco-Aviation conference in Arlington, Va., Steele said, "We don't need any more [biofuel] flight tests. We've done a lot of flight testing and we know this works. We can put in a drop-in fuel without changing the aircraft, without changing the engine."
He added, "Where we are now is at this huge tipping point between the technical certification [of biofuel for aviation], which hopefully will come in the next couple of months...
Getting governments to help de-risk investments [is important]. It's very hard in this [financial] environment for people to invest in things like aviation biofuels. So we need governments to de-risk the early research and development." READ MORE