Carbon-free aviation fuels achievable, says Branson

THE AIRLINE industry “could go from one of the dirtiest to one of the cleanest in 10 years” by switching over to sustainable, carbon-free biofuels, according to Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Airways.

Speaking to the Guardiannewspaper from his holiday home in the British Virgin Islands, he said: "Once the breakthrough takes place, getting to 50-100 per cent is not unrealistic. Aviation fuel is 25-40 per cent of the running costs of airlines, so the industry is open to new fuels. Unlike cars, where there are millions of filling stations, there are only about 1,700 aviation stations in the world. So if you can get the right fuel, like mass-produced algae [or waste gases from industrial steel and aluminium plants] then ... [it] is not so difficult."

In 2008, Virgin flew an aircraft powered by coconut fuel, and the airline industry “thought it was PR. British Airways was . . . dismissive, saying planes will never fly on biofuels. But it actually kick-started thinking. Since then, even BA has started investing in new biofuels.”

Branson was speaking in advance of the launch yesterday in Durban of RenewableJetFuels.org, a website which ranks suppliers bidding to provide renewable aviation fuels – a collaborative effort by his Carbon War Room initiative and academic publisher Elsevier. It marked the start of Carbon War Room’s “aviation operation”, which aims to address market barriers preventing renewable jet fuels moving from test flight stage to commercial production, thereby cutting the industry’s carbon emissions.

The website said initial results showed that, of the firms claiming potential to deliver large amounts of renewable low-carbon jet fuel, “about one-third of them are credible from an economic, scalable and sustainability perspective, in their current state”.