Fuel prices force airlines into action

By Elisabeth Rosenthal
Published: July 8, 2008

ROME: The airline industry is traditionally seen as a bad actor in the global emissions debate. Air travel is by far the fastest-growing source of global greenhouse gas emissions, still rising by about 5 percent a year.
Want to reduce your personal carbon footprint? A round-trip flight for a family of four from London to Los Angeles generates more carbon emissions than commuting by car for a year. It is, indeed, a worrisome and hard-to-resolve trajectory.
But it's summertime, people are flying, so here's a bit of light at the end of this tunnel: A recent report by the international economic research group Innovest describes how the airline industry is now "leading efforts to develop sustainable biofuels," and it points to some level of success.
"The prospects for this type of fuel are very long term, but in the midterm (next generation of airliners) biofuel and regular or synthetic fuel blends are likely, with potential for a dramatic reduction in emissions," the report said.
Given the price of oil, the industry's interest in finding alternatives to fossil fuels, of course, makes sense - the goal not being just greener aircraft but also the industry's survival. With oil prices doubling in the past year, fuel now accounts for 30 percent to 50 percent of airlines' costs.

If governments insist that airline ticket prices reflect the "cost" of airplane emissions into the atmosphere - as the EU plans - fares could skyrocket to a point where they were unaffordable. If the full costs of carbon emissions are factored into the equation, the price of a three-hour flight could rise by $756, the Innovest report said. With that, few airlines would manage to stay in business.
Necessity, then, is the mother of invention.
"If there ever was an incentive to create alternative fuels, $140-a-barrel oil is it," said Paul Charles, communications director of Virgin Atlantic, though he added that the "environmental issue is still the primary incentive."
Charles predicted that given the fast pace of current research, "it is likely that within five years you'll have commercial jets flying on algae - it will be as quick and dramatic as the shift to digital TV."
A number of airlines and aircraft makers are furiously exploring alternative fuels. Virgin led the pack, flying a jumbo jet from London to Amsterdam this year with one of its four tanks using biofuel, in this case made of a blend of coconut oil and nuts. Other airlines have followed.
This month, Rob Fyfe, the chief executive of Air New Zealand, committed to running its fleet on 10 percent biofuels by 2013. He further vowed to use only biofuels made from nonfood plants, focusing on importing fuel from jatropha plantations in Africa and India. Jatropha is a plant that grows in semiarid regions, and its oil can be converted into jet fuel.
Biofuels "present particularly exciting opportunities when placed against a backdrop of jet fuel prices that have recently been as high as $174 a barrel," Fyfe said.
Japan Airlines says it will run a flight partly on biofuel by next spring.
Sébastien Remy, who is in charge of Airbus's alternative fuel program, predicts that 25 percent of jet fuel will be derived from nonpetroleum sources by 2025. In the past few years, research has shown that jet engines today can run on properly refined biofuels, so no mechanical modifications are essential.
Industry experts are pinning their hope on oil from algae, because it is cheap and easily convertible into a fuel that can be used in a plane. Companies like Boeing and Chevron, as well as the U.S. military, are working on the technology.
A couple of years ago most airlines were combating climate change with public relations. And public relations is certainly still a problem. This past week, the British Advertising Standards Agency criticized EasyJet for claiming that its flights generated 22 percent less emissions than traditional airlines.
But sky-high fuel prices are moving polluters to genuine action. Fuel prices are the best friend the environment has these days. Are the airlines' efforts science fiction?
Electric cars and planes powered by algae fuel are technically possible if the research, money and will are there. So now with oil prices high and carbon taxes on the horizon, the industry should be able to find alternatives that will insure its survival, and spare the environment as well.