BA plans pioneering east London waste-to-biofuel plant

The race to operate "carbon lite" flights heated up today when British Airways (BA) announced plans to begin using biofuels made from waste materials within the next four years.

The airline revealed that it has teamed up with US-based Solena Group to produce Europe's first plant for developing bio jet fuels, and is currently assessing four potential sites in east London for the new facility.

The company has also signed a letter of intent with Solena that commits it to purchasing all the fuel produced by the new plant.

Solena's technology uses a gasification system to turn a mixture of domestic, agricultural, forestry and industrial waste into a biogas that can be converted into synthentic kerosene using the Fischer Tropsch process.

BA said that the proposed plant would convert 500,000 tonnes of waste a year into 16 million gallons of bio jet fuel that will result in life cycle greenhouse gas savings of up to 95 per cent compared to fossil fuel-derived jet kerosene.

It added that it would produce more than double the fuel required each year by its fleet at London City airport, raising the prospect of an entirely low-carbon fleet operating from the airport when the plant comes online in 2014.

"This unique partnership with Solena will pave the way for realising our ambitious goal of reducing net carbon emissions by 50 per cent by 2050," said Willie Walsh, chief executive at BA. "We believe it will lead to the production of a real sustainable alternative to jet kerosene."

The facility will also deliver many associated environmental benefits by cutting methane emissions from waste that would have otherwise been sent to landfill, generating up to 20MW of renewable electricity a year using the steam created during the gasification process, and producing naphtha for use in the petrochemicals and inert vitrified slag material for use as building aggregates as side products.

Speaking to BusinessGreen.com, a spokesman for BA said the plant would draw on a wide range of waste streams, including significant quantities of waste that cannot be recycled and as a result would have been sent to landfill.

Solena said that in total the facility would serve to curb greenhouse gas emissions by 550,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent each year, including 250,000 tonnes from diverting mixed waste from landfill and 145,000 tonne life cycle saving from the resulting biofuel.

In addition, BA said the facility would create 1,200 jobs in east London and save local councils up to £36m in landfill costs by allowing them to avoid rising landfill taxes.

The project was welcomed by London mayor Boris Johnson, who said that City Hall would work with the two companies on the project and was looking to attract more firms to invest in waste-to-energy technologies.

The move establishes BA as one of the frontrunners to begin operating flights using fuels made from organic material. A number of aviation companies have invested heavily in developing jet biofuels in recent years, and while a series of successful trials have been undertaken, the industry is yet to gain approval to use biofuels on commercial flights.

Industry insiders expect official certification to be granted within the next few years and a host of suppliers are currently working on biofuels that could potentially be used by jet engines, including fuels made from algae and other energy crops.

However, Friends of the Earth’s biofuels campaigner Kenneth Richter expressed scepticism that jet biofuels could be produced from sustainable sources on a sufficient scale to support current levels of aviation.

"Biofuels for cars were meant to be a way of using waste cooking oil, but we ended up trashing rainforests to grow the crops, leading to more – not less – carbon dioxide," he said. "Fuelling planes with biofuels could cause more of the same problems. BA is already backtracking on its claim that it would only use food waste to fuel these planes."