Being one of the sectors that most emit carbon into the atmosphere, now aviation is investing in a fuel made from grass to “compensate” the environment

The aviation sector, faced with several criticisms for its carbon emissions into the atmosphere, decided to “compensate” the environment by launching a green fuel made from grass. Although in practice the sector's contribution is much smaller than most other forms of transport, the aviation sector will also go through its challenges in order to decarbonize all planes, mainly long-haul flights.

A large portion of road transport can be electrified, but there is still no technology that provides electric planes that can fly intercontinental distances, and the sustainable jet engine offers a possible solution and Alder Fuels considers it to be the most viable option.

Approximately one fifth of the world's carbon emissions originate from aviation transport and 24% if only direct energy use is considered. In total, aviation is only 11,6% of transport's carbon footprint, or 2,5% of the total. This fact is obviously much less than the 15% of global road transport emissions, but it is still a significant value.

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Carbon emissions could decrease in up to 50 years with fuel

Given the novelty of the sector, research shows that the amount of carbon from road transport that moves people will decrease to almost zero in 50 years, while that of the aviation sector will remain almost unchanged in the same period, when it will be the main contributor to transport.

If our goal is to meet global warming reduction targets, we will need to find an alternative to jet fuel, as the current option is fuel created from “waste oils and greases” (also known as FOG). . These are the residual by-products of the food industry, such as beef tallow.

In 2016, AltAir Fuels successfully tested fuel production from this source using a converted refinery in Southern California and technology from Honeywell UOP.

How green fuel works

However, not everything is rosy, Bryan Sherbacow, who was COO of AltAir, noticed that there was not enough FOG to scale up this fuel, however well it worked. With that, in the year 2021, he founded Alder Fuels, which aims to create sustainable fuels from plant biomass.

There is still a certain skepticism towards fuels derived from biomass, because they can lead to the conversion of perfectly good arable land away from food production, or the destruction of primary forest.