KLM Royal Dutch Airlines says it will begin operating weekly transatlantic flights between New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport and Amsterdam’s Schiphol using a biofuel mixture consisting of 25 percent cooking oil and 75 percent jet fuel.
The airline has been experimenting with cooking oil as a fuel source for several years, beginning in 2009 with the company’s first flight demonstration with passengers. Two years later, the company made the first-ever commercial flight with a biofuel-powered plane, servicing 171 paying passengers from Amsterdam to Paris.
The company says the cooking oil used in the fuel mixture will come from restaurants in Louisiana. While the cost of using cooking oil for airplane fuel is currently significantly higher than that of jet fuel, the airline anticipates this will change with wider use. KLM says it also has tinkered with algae-based biofuels and bio-kerosene as viable fuel sources.
“A lot still has to happen before biofuel will be available on a large scale and for it to be economically competitive in relation to fossil-fuel kerosene,” KLM said in a statement. “We cannot achieve this alone. We absolutely need the commitment and support of all the relevant parties: business, government and society.”
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The transatlantic flights are part of a continuous testing process, the Dutch carrier says. It hopes to have one percent of its flights operate on biofuels by 2015.
Other European airlines also are considering biofuels, including German-based Lufthansa, which signed an agreement to build a large-scale algae-to-aviation biofuels production facility.
Last year, British Airways agreed to purchase $500 million worth of sustainable jet fuel as part of its GreenSky London Initiative. The program was created by the airline in partnership with Solena Group, a U.S.-based biofuel manufacturer, to annually convert approximately 500,000 tons of landfill waste into 50,000 tons of low-carbon jet fuel, 50,000 tons of biodiesel, bionaptha and renewable energy.
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Founder & Principal Consultant, Hower Impact
Mike Hower is the founder of Hower Impact — a boutique consultancy delivering best-in-class strategic communication advisory and support for corporate sustainability, ESG and climate tech.
Published Mar 13, 2013 3am EDT / 12am PDT / 7am GMT / 8am CET