United Airlines Flies Climate-Friendly Skies with Biofuel Powered Plane

(MalayMailOnline) — Sometime this summer, a United Airlines flight will take off from Los Angeles International Airport bound for San Francisco using fuel generated from farm waste and oils derived from animal fats. For passengers, little will be different — the engines will still roar, the seats in economy will still be cramped — but for the airlines and the biofuels industry, the flight will represent a longawaited milestone: The first time a domestic airline operates regular passenger flights using an alternative jet fuel.

For years, biofuels have been seen as an important part of the solution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And airlines, with their concentration around airports and use of the same kind of fuel, have been seen as a promising customer in a biofuels industry that has struggled to gain traction. Now that relationship is showing signs of taking off.

Today, United plans to announce a US$30 million (RM113 million) investment in one of the largest producers of aviation biofuels, Fulcrum BioEnergy, the biggest investment so far by a domestic airline in the small but growing field of alternative fuels. (Cathay Pacific, based in Hong Kong, last year announced a smaller investment in Fulcrum.) The quantities that United is planning to buy from Fulcrum constitute a small drop in its voluminous fuel consumption. Last year, United’s fleet consumed 3.9 billion gallons of fuel, at a cost of US$11.6 billion. But airlines are increasingly under pressure to reduce carbon emissions.

United’s deal is the airline’s second major push toward alternative fuels. In 2013, the airline agreed to buy 15 million gallons of biofuels over three years with a California-based producer called AltAir Fuels, which makes biofuels out of nonedible natural oils and agricultural waste. It expects that the first 5 million gallons from AltAir will be delivered this summer at its Los Angeles International Airport hub to help power the flights to San Francisco.

For the first two weeks, four to five flights a day will carry a fuel mixture that is 30 per cent biofuel and 70 per cent traditional jet fuel; after that, the fuel will be blended into the overall supply, United said. READ MORE and MORE (Washington Post)