Wassup, EU? The Top 10 Trends in Europe’s Advanced Bioeconomy

#8 Airlines: The struggle to de-carbonize

Airlines would like to do something, but in the UK, British Airways partly blames lack of government support for having to scupper its Green Sky project with Solena to produce 16 million gallons of aviation biofuel annually from London’s MSW beginning in 2017. The government has failed to include aviation biofuels in its Road Transport Fuel Obligation policy that provides incentives for road transport biofuels, a policy failure the company says led to investor reticence in the project. Solena entered bankruptcy proceedings three months ago so BA is looking for other waste-to-biofuels technology partners to bring the project back on the table, hopefully with future government support.

It’s a common tale — good intentions, tough to deploy. In this report, we highlighted among other airlines Lufthansa, SAS, KLM, British Airways, British Midland, Virgin and others who are working on building aviation biofuels into their supply chains. The activity includes participation in a number of research consortia and industry goal-setting (such as IATA’s 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050) — but dozens of airlines have taken individual steps beyond these.