Aviation is one of the most polluting industries on the planet\u2013but a groundswell of innovation in alternative fuels, and investments from major airlines, could set it on a path to carbon zero.<\/p>\n
At a steel mill outside Beijing, reactors attached to the building capture emissions from the factory. Those waste gases can then be turned into fuel. LanzaTech, a biotech startup that designed a way to turn those emissions into ethanol, recently blended that ethanol into jet fuel that powered a Virgin Atlantic flight from Orlando to London.<\/p>\n
The jet fuel\u2013with a carbon footprint smaller than regular fuel, but a comparable cost\u2013is one way that the airline industry can begin to tackle its climate problem. In 2017, flights produced 859 million metric tons of CO2. By midcentury, like other industries, airlines will have to reach net zero emissions for the world to stay on track to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement.<\/p>\n
[Source Photo: Amarnath Tade\/Unsplash]
\nFor short flights, airlines can begin to shift to electric planes. Eviation, one startup with an all-electric nine-seater airplane, plans to begin making its first commuter flights in 2021. Zunum, which designed a hybrid-electric plane, plans to be in the air in 2022. Others are also on the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do see an electric plane for short distances,\u201d says Sophia Mendelsohn, the head of sustainability and environmental social governance for JetBlue. The company\u2019s venture arm invested in Zunum in 2017. But electric technology likely isn\u2019t in the near future for larger, longer flights. \u201cIt\u2019s physics,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s going to work for a certain amount of energy. After a certain amount of energy, the battery won\u2019t be worth putting up in the air.\u201d<\/p>\n
For most flights, the industry is beginning to turn to new fuels. In September, JetBlue made its first flight using a renewable blend fuel. Though chemically identical to regular jet fuel, 15.5% of it came from used cooking oil from restaurants, which otherwise would have been wasted. Next year, the airline will begin buying around 33 million gallons of biofuel a year, or about 20% of the fuel it uses annually at JFK.<\/p>\n
[Photo: United Airlines]
\nA few days before JetBlue\u2019s first biofuel flight, United flew a 787 from San Francisco to Zurich with a fuel made partly from a mustard seed-based biofuel (for now, all of these fuels are blends for safety reasons, though fuels that use no fossil ingredients may be possible in the future). United isn\u2019t new to biofuels\u2013it made its first test flight with a biofuel in 2009, and since 2016, has been making regularly scheduled flights from LAX using fuel from World Energy, an L.A.-based startup that turns agricultural waste into biofuel.<\/p>\n
United is now working to scale up its use of biofuels and synthetic fuels. \u201cSupply is definitely a challenge,\u201d says Aaron Robinson, senior manager for environmental strategy and sustainability at United. \u201cIf we went out to the market and said, \u2018Hey, we want\u00a0to buy some more biofuels for aviation\u2019 today, there just isn\u2019t supply for us to buy. That is part of why United has been investing early to get these companies off the ground\u2013to make a commitment not only on paper, but in dollars, to bringing these companies to fruition.\u201d
\n[Source Photo: Amarnath Tade\/Unsplash]
\nFulcrum BioEnergy, one of the companies that United invested in, broke ground on a new plant in May in Reno that turns household waste into a liquid fuel. By 2020, the plant will produce 10.5 million gallons of fuel a year. \u201cThe interesting part about Fulcrum is by using municipal solid waste, you\u2019re also reducing methane emissions because that waste isn\u2019t ending up in a landfill to sit there for millennia,\u201d says Robinson. Methane, which is produced by food as it decomposes (and other natural sources), is 84 times more potent than CO2.<\/p>\n
Some airlines may soon also begin using synthetic fuel made from CO2 pulled directly from the atmosphere. Carbon Engineering, one startup in the new \u201cdirect air capture\u201d industry, is raising funds for its first commercial plant, which will capture carbon from the air to make a fuel that the company says will be able to\u00a0compete with regular jet fuel on cost in some markets that have policies in place to support technology with lower carbon emissions. Eventually, the fuel could be competitive everywhere. \u201cThey could capture carbon from the air, and if there was cheap renewable electricity [to run their plants], one could imagine that they could have a product that could be close to cost parity or cost-competitive over the long term,\u201d says Adam Klauber, a principal at the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute.<\/p>\n
All of these fuels can be used in planes without any changes in the current system. \u201cWe don\u2019t have to modify our engines, we don\u2019t have to change the planes, we don\u2019t have to change the infrastructure at the airport to use this biofuel, which makes it a lot easier to implement as well,\u201d Robinson says. \u201cThese biofuel producers just become another fuel supplier for the airlines.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a positive direction\u2013but there\u2019s still a very long way for the industry to go. United uses more biofuel than any other airline. But the over 1 million gallons it uses annually is only 1% of its overall fuel use. World Energy, its supplier in Los Angeles, is still the only major producer of its kind in the world. Fulcrum, the company that will make jet fuel from household waste, will supply United with nearly 10 billion gallons of fuel over 10 years, but hasn\u2019t yet started production. Right now, state and local incentives and the market also mean that fuel producers can make more money supplying diesel to trucks rather than jet fuel to airlines.<\/p>\n
[Source Photo: Amarnath Tade\/Unsplash]
\nAccording to one industry report, Klauber says, the world would need to add a significant number of commercial-scale plants making alternative fuel every year, from 2020 to 2050, to meet carbon goals. Until 2035, that number of new plants might need to be as high as 328 annually. Right now, only around 20 are in planning, and some of those are years from breaking ground. \u201cWhat this is suggestive of is that the private sector and investment community alone are unlikely to mobilize the capital necessary to make those investments,\u201d he says. Support from the public sector could help, similar to grants from the Department of Energy that helped Fulcrum get off the ground in Nevada. \u201cWe obviously need to see much more than that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Most alternative fuels also need to come down much more in cost. \u201cWe see this as a chicken-and-egg problem,\u201d says Mendelsohn. \u201cThe customer on our flight to Disneyworld [is] saying, we want to fly on a fuel that puts less emissions into the air. At the same time, the customer is going to select a ticket largely based on price, so we need that fuel to be flying the customer in something that\u2019s price-comparable to fossil fuel. Well, fossil fuels\u00a0have been around for 150 years. That\u2019s a 150-year jump-start on infrastructure, subsidies\u2026that renewable jet fuel is trying to leapfrog in five years.\u201d
\nAirlines will also have to make other changes, Klauber says, likely including significant changes in the design of planes, such as manta-ray-like \u201cblended wing\u201d designs that combine the body and wings to make a plane more efficient. \u201cIt would radically change the way aircraft are produced and require investment and new production capabilities and processes,\u201d he says. But radical change is possible. A recent report created by the Energy Transitions Commission found that airlines, along with other industries that have particularly difficult climate challenges, can feasibly reach net zero emissions by the middle of the century.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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