BA signs up to Sustainable Aviation Fuel Users Group

The aviation industry has beefed up its efforts to identify sustainable sources of biofuel for aircraft with the announcement that the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Users Group is to welcome a number of new members and extend its research projects to cover types of saltwater plants.

The group announced this week that British Airways, Cathay Pacific, TUIfly and Virgin Blue have joined the coalition, taking the number of aviation and engineering firms involved to 16, including high-profile firms such as Boeing, Air France, KLM, Virgin Atlantic and Honeywell UOP.

"Aviation is stepping up and addressing its environmental and fuel challenges and the work being done by these industry leaders is at the forefront of that effort," said Billy Glover, managing director of Environmental Strategy for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, which founded the group back in 2008 alongside engineering firm Honeywell.

He added that the group had already delivered "tremendous technical progress " and was now extending its research efforts and increasing its focus on developing the sustainability practices that will be required to ensure that the biofuels used by airlines deliver genuine emission reductions.

The organisation said that its members had pledged to work with the Roundtable for Sustainable Biofuels, a global body of NGOs, green groups and biofuel developers that is working on new standards designed to help ensure that the crops used to make biofuels are produced in an environmentally sustainable manner and do not contribute to increased carbon emissions through related deforestation and changing land use.

A number of airlines have already successfully tested jet fuels that contain biofuels and are now focusing their research efforts on developing biofuels that can be produced at an industrial scale without affecting agricultural land use or driving up food prices.

The Sustainable Aviation Fuel Users Group said it was currently working on research into using algae and jatropha curcas-based biofuels, both of which are believed to have a significantly lower environmental and carbon impact than fuels made from corn or other food crops. It added that it was also about to launch a new project to assess the viability of halophytes, a class of plants that thrive in saltwater habitats, which it is hoped can be produced in large quantities without eating into agricultural land.