French Entrepreneurs Look to Agriculture and Forestry for the Future of Aviation Fuel
by John Laurenson (MarketPlace) Sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, is airplane fuel made from renewable sources like reused cooking oil. Nearly half a million flights have used this fuel mixed with regular petroleum-based kerosene — almost all of them in Europe.
Now, the French say they have produced the second generation of this fuel, made from plant sugar.
Marc Delcourt, co-founder and CEO of Global Bioenergies, stood near a beet sugar factory and a small adjacent unit. “This is the unit we built this year,” he said.
The facility uses bacteria to produce a hydrocarbon — fuel, in other words — from sugar.
In the Champagne region of France, they grow grapes, of course, but also sugar beets. Lots of them. Napoleon ordered the mass planting of sugar beets when a British naval blockade stopped sugar supplies from the Caribbean. Some 200 years later, France is still the largest producer of sugar beets in Europe.
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Global Bioenergies said it plans to build a plant producing 30,000 tons of aviation fuel from timber waste in 2027. READ MORE