Biofuels like this have some very significant scale constraints, and quite literally amount to burning food. Per the article:
Virgin Atlantic’s 100% SAF flight is a one-time stunt, and the airline won’t regularly offer all-SAF flights. Standard jet engines aren’t designed to run on only sustainable fuel, and it is too expensive and rare for it to be practical for airlines to run all-SAF routes.
Big deal, I’ve gone my entire life fueled by fat and sugar.
But are you a plane?
Are you a bird?
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They did test flights here with “bio-kerosine” made from old kitchen fat. While this is a nice thing, it is a mere publicity gadget. We did some back-of-the-envelope calculations about this. Starting from the amount of kerosine currently sold in this country, over the relative low output of usable “bio-kerosine” from recycled kitchen oils and fats to the production specifics, we got a result.
Even if we turned each and every piece of arable land - fields, meadows, pastures, wine yards, commercially used forests, gardens - everything from the sea to the mountains into rapeseed fields, every year, without crop rotation, we still won’t get enough of this “bio-kerosine” out of it to keep commercial planes in the air at current levels.
I’m fueled by fat and sugar. How do I fly across the Atlantic?
So cool! Now for the rich to fly, not only will they destroy the planet with co2, but they will also starve poor people! That is progress!
Insert “Your mom let them ride her that long?” Joke here
