The problem is that it takes time, investment and technology – as well as a strong policy push – to swap out a fuel as ubiquitous as kerosene. These fuels are made from recycled waste such as used cooking oil, industrial waste and agricultural and forestry residues.īut industry-wide, the production of alternative fuels remains miniscule. So that's what we started focusing on."Įleven years on and SkyNRG is one of a handful of companies supplying "advanced waste" biofuels to airlines. "But we knew that whatever happened, someone needed to get the fuel and get it into an aircraft and sell it. Little was known at the time about how to do this, says Maarten van Dijk, one of the three and managing director of SkyNRG. In 2010, a venture founded by Dutch airline KLM and several other partners began one of the first efforts to develop more climate-friendly alternatives to conventional kerosene. Companies like Airbus have grand plans to develop hydrogen planes within 15 years, for example, but what can be done in the shorter term to curb the aviation industry's impact on the climate? Can we find alternative fuels to burn in our aircraft or even change the way aircraft fly so they are kinder to the planet? If the world hopes to limit global warming by meeting the ambitious cuts in carbon emissions set out in the Paris Agreement on climate change, aviation will need to move away from fossil fuels completely in the long term. But bar gradually rising efficiency in planes, little progress has been made so far on how to actually decarbonise aeroplanes All this means that we need to start doing far more on aviation emissions, and fast. With Covid-19, flights and passenger numbers plummeted, but the number of people flying is expected to return to 2019 levels within a few years and continue to grow. By 2019, it accounted for 2.5% of the world's CO2 emissions. Between 20, there was a 5% average rise in flights per year. Just one flight can emit as much CO2 as many people do in a year, and the number of flights globally is expected to grow at an alarming pace over the coming decades.Ĭompared to other sectors, aviation is a relatively small contributor to global greenhouse emissions, but it is also one of the fastest growing. This is why flying individuals, or goods, around the world is so very energy intensive – and so terrible for the climate. A Boeing 747-400 jumbo jet carries 63,000 gallons (240,000 litres) of jet fuel, equal to about a 10th of an Olympic sized swimming pool, and burns through it at a rate of 4 litres (0.9 gallons) per second. Aircraft use an incredible amount of fuel.
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