Will New Biofuels Help Decarbonize Aviation and Shipping?

by Kent Harrington (Chenected) ... For example, which country should own the emissions from a Mexico City flight to New York, or a ship moving goods between Shanghai and Los Angeles? The country of departure, or arrival?

Don't even try to wade into the swamp of national flags or legal jurisdiction. It's all a deliberately designed game of Greek shipping tycoon whack-a-mole.

If ships and planes continue to operate beyond international control, the estimated acceleration of GHG growth is alarming. Trending along with rising population and the standard of living, these two slippery rogues will increase CO₂ emissions from today’s 6 percent all the way to 40 percent by 2050.

In the meantime, some help is on the way as biofuels start to come online. Alaska Airlines recently took off from Seattle to San Francisco using a mixture of traditional jet fuel mixed with a 20 percent biofuel from fermented corn.

The biofuel was developed by Gevo, a company based in Englewood, Colorado (read the press release).

This latest innovation is part of an ongoing program at Alaska Airlines, which has flown demonstration flights with a variety of biofuels.

As far back as 2011, It was the first US airline to fly commercial passenger flights using a biofuel from reclaimed cooking oil and eventually flew 75 commercial flights between Seattle and Washington, DC.

Reducing greenhouse gases
Gevo's fuel comes from corn grown sustainably from seed to harvest. One of the company's Midwestern suppliers, Farmer David Kolsrud, started low-carbon farming only six years ago in 2010 in South Dakota using techniques to minimize the use of water, fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides.

After the harvest he sells his non-edible corn to Gevo, "which separates out the protein for animal feed and converts the remaining starch to isobutanol." A second step turns the isobutanol into jet fuel. "This practice is a game-changer for farmers," said Kolsrud, "It allows us to extend our crop and create new jobs that didn't exist six years ago."

In March, United became the first US airline to use sustainable biofuels on a commercial scale. The airliner's flights between Los Angeles and San Francisco are powered by a blend of 30 percent biofuel, produced by AltAir Fuels. United intends to gradually phase biofuels into every flight departing from LAX.

Fortunately, there will be missions standards placed on new ships after 2019, but there are no plans to extend the standards to one hundred thousand working ships.

Despite industry-wide evasion, some individual shippers have made improvements. Danish shipping giant Maersk cut fuel use and CO2 emissions by 30 percent after mandating that captains of its container ships travel more slowly.

100% Drop-in renewable diesel fuel
But milestones are popping up, like the Navy ship that just ran on 100 percent drop-in renewable diesel fuel for the first time. Developed by Applied Research Associates (ARA) and Chevron Lummus Global, the bio-diesel also reduced the ship's GHG emissions by 80%.

The ARA's Isoconversion process uses waste like used cooking oil and brown grease recovered from grease traps as feedstocks. READ MORE