A research study out of Michigan Technological University shows that Camelina plants can offer a net carbon reduction of 84% over petroleum-based fuels, and non-food farmland in Montana could generate between 200 and 300 million gallons per year for aviation fuels. It may seem great, but is there a catch?
Yes, several in fact. But only one is significant.
The first claim is that there was an 84% reduction in carbon. This is based on the entire life cycle of petroleum-based fuels (pumping it out of the ground, refining it, transporting it for use and the carbon output) versus growing Camelina plants, refining it and transporting it for use. What allows for the massive reduction in net carbon is that the Camelina plant is taking existing carbon out of the air (sequestering it in the plant as organic material) and then releasing that carbon back into the atmosphere when burnt.
Next, the study was commissioned by a company that manufactures the technology to convert camelina plants into biojet fuel. While they do have an interest in hyping their product, biofuel from plants isn’t some crackpot technology, rather its completely viable. However we have to worry about the displacement of food crops, which this study takes into account – it only uses land that isn’t currently in use to grow food crops. So it isn’t as bad as using corn to grow to turn into ethanol.
The biggest catch is the acre to gallon ratio. They claim that 2-3M acres would generate 200-300M gallons of biofuel for jets per year. How many flights is that? Well, a loaded 777 on a flight from JFK airport in New York City to London-Heathrow airport (LHR) in the UK uses about 16,300 gallons of fuel (it varies depending on direction, flight path, delays, etc). So you could fly back and forth 42 times a day for a year on 250M gallons of jet fuel. While that might sound like a lot, estimates show that over 740M gallons of jet fuel were wasted by flight delays in 2007, nearly three times the amount that the state of Montana could produce. The entire airline industry consumed about 22 billion gallons of jet fuel per year. This 200-300M gallons would represent roughly 1.1% of total jet fuel consumed. And we don’t have 100 other states like Montana to grow this stuff.
While biomass to biofuel its no where near a solution to the consumption of oil-based fuels, it is a step in the right direction – the net reduction in carbon emissions can help, and jet engines are becoming more efficient (GEnX, Trent 1000, P&W GTF-based models) so they’ll use less fuel. Even this week, Boeing announced a 2% reduction in fuel burn in a slightly revised 737 engine.
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