February 7, 2017

Cutting down aviation emissions with biofuels

Recently, Alaska Airlines piloted the first ever passenger flight using a 20 percent blend of sustainable biofuel. These efforts were accomplished with the help of Washington State’s Northwest Advanced Renewables Alliance (NARA). This passenger flight flew across the country from Seatac Airport to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. The biofuel was produced using byproducts from the harvesting of forests. By using these byproducts they are able to reduce the high cost of production. Like many new technologies, high costs are a major barrier to integrating this fuel. Right now this flight is just a demonstration of the technology that has been created, and it will take a lot more time and research in order for it to be integrated into all planes.

For this biofuel to really take off, prices are going to need to greatly decrease in order to make it competitive with traditional jet fuel. One company, Gevo, claims that with their technology, they will be able to do just that. Gevo hopes to soon be selling its pre-refined isobutanol product for somewhere between $3.50 and $4.50 per gallon.  These quoted values, however, fail to incorporate the costs of transporting and blending the product. All of these steps will lead to increased costs and barriers, that Carol Sims, Alaska Air’s director of environmental regulation, says are some of the challenges with biofuels. If we ignore these additional costs, the values might seem quite cheap. However, crude oil currently sells for about $1.05 per gallon. Moreover, in the case of this flight, replacing 1,080 gallons of the fuel under these predicted prices, we would expect to see an increase of the airline’s fuel costs from anywhere from $2,646 to $3,726. (These numbers were found by multiplying the per gallon cost of pre-refined isobutanal product by the number of gallons that were replaced and then subtracting that number by the price of crude multiplied by 1,080 gallons.)  However, if carbon emission standards are tightened, this increase in price will likely not hinder airlines from moving towards this blended fuel. But if we extrapolate this 20% blend level across all 1.6 million barrels per day of jet fuel used in 2016 in the US, it would equate to 320,000 barrels a day, or 13 million gallons daily. Because there are only about 900,000 tons of utility tree trimmings available for biomass production each year, it would be necessary for the biomass to be produced specifically for biofuel production. For this reason, making this transition will call for a separate foresting or biomass production industry for the generation of biofuel. With this in mind, I predict that the low prices quoted by Gevo will increase once production is brought up to full market scale, because they will no longer be getting their biomass feedstock as a byproduct.

Thanks to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), companies have pledged to reduce carbon dioxide emission by 50% of their 2005 levels by 2050. These IATA member make up 83% of all air traffic, so these commitments could lead to large cuts in emissions. Pledges like this are what have helped drive this fuel technology. The United Nations however,  are in the process of creating additional regulations that are stronger than those of the IATA. They will do this by creating aircraft design regulation for new planes designed in 2020 and on. This will further pressure airlines into finding new technology to meet emission standards. These regulations, however, may lead to increased costs of flying due to predicted increased overhead costs for the airlines by 2020. The Air Transport Action Group suggests that these needs to meet regulations will cost 1.3 trillion dollars across the industry by 2020.

In my opinion, reducing these emissions would be a great way to help alleviate carbon dioxide stress of the atmosphere. In 2015 aviation was responsible for 2.17% of all tonnes of CO2 produced. Integrating biofuel at this 20 percent level would decrease our total CO2 emission by .35%, based off an 80% reduction of emission for the percentage of biofuel replaced. Although this number may seem small, this reduction would be solely from a modest integration of biofuel. As we have seen before, small acts in the aviation industry can lead to a big difference in emissions.