UK Highlands looking at biofuels for rural airports

In the UK, HITRANS, the regional transport partnership for the Highlands and Islands, is spearheading a significant European-funded project to assist and develop rural and remote airports with use of new technologies.

SPARA 2020, which stands for Smart Peripheral and Remote Airports, is a three-year €2.4 million Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme area project. It brings together a range of public authorities, academic institutions, airports, small businesses and specialists to focus on the particular challenges of airports serving remote and peripheral areas.
The aim of the project is to heighten awareness of the importance to rural and remote communities of local air services and to use innovative technologies to make them as cost effective and environmentally friendly as possible.

The business case for offering biofuels to incoming aircraft at the region’s airports will be examined in some detail learning from some pioneering work at Karlstadt Airport in Sweden.