Aviation use of biofuels waiting for takeoff

The very first commercial flight boosted by biofuel occurred only four years ago, when a Virgin Atlantic jumbo jet hopped from London Heathrow to Amsterdam Schiphol aided by fuel derived from Brazilian babassu nuts and coconuts.

Since then, airlines, aircraft manufacturers and enginemakers around the world have gotten into the act, announcing with great fanfare the odd test or revenue flight “powered by clean biofuels.”

One of the latest efforts was by Porter Airlines, which operated Canada’s first biofuel-assisted revenue flight in April, a skip from Toronto to Ottawa on a Bombardier Q400 70-seat turboprop.

But to put things in perspective, the Virgin Atlantic flight on a B747 was powered by a blend that included 20-percent biofuel — in only one of its four engines. The rest was traditional kerosene.

Same with the Porter Airlines Dash-8 flight, which flew on a 50/50 blend (camelina sativa oil and jet fuel, in its case) in one of its two engines.

These flights generate publicity but are exceedingly rare exceptions among the many thousands of regular carbon-burning flights each day worldwide.

So basically, the aviation industry is powered 100 per cent by ozone-depleting fossil fuel — jet A1 fuel. And an awful lot of it. The global airline industry burns more than 68 billion U.S. gallons, or about 260 billion litres, of oil each year, according to the airline lobby, the International Air Transport Association, based in Montreal.

Steve Lott of Airlines for America, which represents U.S. airlines, noted that the figure (it’s 18 billion gallons, or about 72 billion litres, of fuel annually for U.S. airlines alone) does not include the military or general aviation — two major users.

It is in airlines’ self-interest to cut fuel costs, their biggest single expense at 30 per cent or more of total operating costs.

Aircraft fuel is already expensive and will only get more so, is the consensus, so now’s the time to start working on bringing down the price of biofuels, which are themselves five to 10 times more expensive than jet fuel, said Sylvain Cofsky, executive director of Montreal’s Green Aviation Research & Development Network, which helped finance the Porter flight.

He and about a dozen peo- ple interviewed said the bet on biofuel will be won only when it can be produced in huge quantities economically, inexhaustibly and sustainably.

So the road to cleaner aviation will be long and meandering, and these demo flights represent initial baby steps, if that.

Stephen Colavincenzo, who heads biofuel projects for Bombardier Inc., a partner in the Porter flight, said that the industry has drawn the appropriate conclusions from the misguided rush to corn or sugarcane and other feedstocks that displaced much-needed food crops.