Can commercial aircraft really run on biofuel?
Over the past 12 years I’ve put a lot of time, money and energy into combating climate change. Needless to say, I applaud even the smallest efforts that individuals and businesses make to contribute to the sustainability of our planet. What I don’t applaud is what I call ‘greenwash’, aka hogwash in the sustainability industry.
Here’s a fine example.
Recently, The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in India announced in The Hindu, a national Indian newspaper, that they were looking for a partner to run commercial and defence aircraft on biofuel. Their aim was to save on foreign exchange by reducing to almost zero the import bill for fossil aviation fuel. In addition, the CSIR’s spokesman said, the ‘new eco-friendly technology will be a game changer as it is greenhouse- and carbon-neutral’.
It certainly would be a game-changer. Sounds great, right? If only it were possible. It’s the sort of news that immediately sets off my greenwash alarm, a reaction justified by a few quick calculations.
Fuel or Food?
The article suggests that the CSIR will make fuel from jatropha, a plant native to Mexico and Central America. After more than a decade of research, scientists have agreed that this plant requires good quality soil and fertiliser to produce the optimal yield of 1.75 tonnes per hectare per year.
A single 2 hour flight from Bengaluru to Delhi on a Boeing 737-800 carrying 189 passengers, consumes approximately 6.4 tonnes of fuel according to Bangalore Aviation. Therefore, to fly from Bengaluru to Delhi on 100% biofuel (with a perfect production yield), you would need to plant 3.66 hectares of land with jatropha, and grow it for one year.
There’s a familiar dilemma here: this land could also be used to grow crops that would feed a family of seven people for one year. To put it another way, every hour that plane is in the sky, food production capacity for around 7,000 people is lost.
Which would you choose? Your flight? Or feeding the people of India?
Deforestation of the rainforests
There is another consideration. If India starts using its existing edible oil production to make biofuels in an effort to reduce fossil fuels, it will have to import even more edible oils from Malaysia and Indonesia. This would result in more deforestation of the rainforests, in itself a major contributor to climate change.
An article by the US’s National Center for Biotechnology Information supports this and states that the production of oil seeds has increased from 184.40 Indian lakh (a lakh is equal to 100,000) tons in 2000-2001 to 297.99 lakh tons in 2011-2012. Even so, this increased production has not kept pace with the demand for edible oils in India.
A substantial portion of this requirement for edible oils is met through palm oil imported from Indonesia and Malaysia. And as we all know by now, the demand for palm oil is reducing wildlife populations which rely on palm trees for food and habitats.
What about biofuel from used vegetable cooking oil?
A client of ours, one of the largest quick service restaurant chains in the UAE, generates enough waste cooking oil in one month to produce 80 tonnes of biofuel. This is approximately the amount a single 14 hour commercial flight burns from Dubai to London. That’s right: it takes one month’s worth of waste cooking oil to fuel a single flight.
There are 14 non-stop flights daily from Dubai to London. If they were to run on biofuel produced from waste cooking oil, Dubai would need another 186,000 quick service restaurants. To put that in perspective, McDonald’s currently has about 170 restaurants in the whole of the UAE!
This is not the first time it has been suggested that airlines replace their aviation fossil fuel with more sustainable fuels. I have no doubt that they made the announcement before they did the sums and realised that it isn’t at all sustainable.
What is sustainable, however, is replacing fossil fuel with biofuels in motor vehicles, school buses, trains, and other fuel-driven machinery. That’s where India’s CSIR – and others – should be focusing their efforts.
What other climate change myths need debunking? Let me know and I’ll investigate.
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