The algae industry is not so much in its infancy as still developing in the womb. A bright spot in the algae picture is that industries with burgeoning fuel bills have become interested is assisting with the birth. In particular, aviation companies have identified algae as a potential fuel source for their fleets. Airlines such as KLM/Northwest and Virgin Atlantic and manufacturers such as Boeing are working to support algae producers and bring the technology to a point where it can support their fuel needs.
For the airlines, the advantages of algae are significant. Fuel is a major component of their business costs. Aviation uses 5 percent of the world’s fuel and is responsible for 2 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Finding an alternative feedstock is important to the long-term stability of the industry. A second reason for their support is a growing emphasis on using sustainable fuels in the airline industry. A spokesman for Virgin Atlantic says biofuels are a solution for the aviation industry to cut carbon emissions and preserve the environment. “About three years ago, we started to see some things happening on the fuel technology front that caught our attention,” says Bill Glover, Boeing’s managing director of environmental strategy. “We thought we should start looking into that. Our motivation was the price of fuel and also interest in finding ways to lower the environmental footprint of aviation.” Virgin, Boeing and a number of other leading aviation companies formed the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Users Group. The group’s members represent about 15 percent of the world’s aviation fuel consumption. “SAFUG is focused on establishing the sustainability criteria, such as life-cycle assessments, so we have a fact base to avoid the kinds of problems that have crept into early biofuels development,” Glover says. “We don’t want to be competing with food uses and that sort of thing. We want to understand that and avoid problems from the start.”
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Partnering for Progress
SAFUG is partnering with the Natural Resources Defense Council and the World Wildlife Fund to develop its sustainability criteria. The group has announced two initial sustainability research projects. Assistant Professor Rob Bailis of Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies will conduct the first peer-reviewed, comprehensive sustainability assessment of jatropha to include life cycle carbon dioxide emissions and the socio-economic impacts on farmers in developing nations. Similarly, NRDC will conduct a comprehensive assessment of algae to ensure it meets the group’s stringent sustainability criteria. “This is a tremendous opportunity for leading airlines, supported by well-respected energy and environmental organizations, to help commercial aviation take control of its future fuel supply in terms of origin, sustainability and environmental impacts,” Glover says. “The No. 1 priority going forward is to complete thorough assessments of sustainable plant sources, harvesting and economic impacts, and processing technologies that can help achieve that goal.”
Glover says the NRDC and WWF have a long history of working with industries to improve their environmental profiles. “These groups had established relationships with some of our members,” he says. “They were a known quantity and were willing to have a constructive dialogue about establishing the facts. It’s a good relationship based on common interests in reducing the industry’s environmental footprint in a way that has positive attributes for all the parties concerned.”
Each member of SAFUG has signed a document committing it to “advance the development, certification, and commercial use of drop-in sustainable aviation fuels.” Drop-in fuels are those which can be substituted for commercial aviation fuels with no changes to the fuel transportation, storage and dispensing infrastructure or to the planes. The document also defines what the group believes to be sustainable standards. The fuel should not compete with food crops, cause disruptive land-use changes or jeopardize water supplies. A sustainable fuel will have significantly lower life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions than petroleum-based fuels. In developing economies, alternative fuel projects should improve the socio-economic well-being for local people, including subsistence farmers. Finally, an alternative fuel should not cause high-value conservation areas and native ecosystems to be cleared for agricultural production.
The aviation industry is by nature conservative in changing key components of the industry in order to preserve its passenger’s safety. However, the push to develop an alternative fuel for commercial aviation has taken root rather quickly by industry standards. “We are a pretty complex industry and necessarily conservative because we want to make sure we are reliable in serving the public,” Glover says. “This is actually moving very fast from our industry perspective. We are very excited about that.”
Test Flights Take Off
Finding a fuel that will work properly with jet engines is a key priority for the safety conscious aviation industry. In February 2008, a Virgin Atlantic jet was the first to fly on a mixture of biobased fuel and kerosene. That test using fuel derived from coconuts and a palm called babassu was the first of four planned by SAFUG. “We found no show-stoppers in the Virgin Atlantic test,” Glover says. “It wasn’t perfect and the fuel will probably not be the mix that will be commercialized, but it gave us the stepping stone toward more interesting possibilities. It gave people confidence and verified that we can do this. That was a big hurdle.”
An Air New Zealand jet fueled with jatropha-based aviation fuel was scheduled to take flight before the end of 2008. The other tests will be carried out by Continental Airlines and Japan Airlines. “Each flight will test a different feedstock as a source of the fuel,” Glover says. “There are also four main aircraft engine manufacturers serving commercial aviation and we wanted to make sure they were all engaged. We want to understand the technical viability and the economic viability, and see what we need to do to facilitate the commercial reality. That’s where we want to head.”
Because aviation is a worldwide industry, and alternative fuel feedstocks are likely to vary widely from country to country, the industry will need fuel specifications that will be workable in many different situations. “The key to that will be to specify the performance you need and the things you cannot have as constituents,” Glover says. “There are certain compounds that can do damage when used long term in an engine or an airframe. So you want to screen for those things. But other than that we will basically have a performance-based specification.”
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