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Air NZ's Green Con-job

5 January 2009

Over the holiday break, Air New Zealand made a big deal of the fact that they'd flown one of their passenger jets on biofuel.

Woohoo?

They'd like to think so but I think not.

According to the mainstream media, both here in NZ and all over the world, this flight "made history".

It was actually a pretty good PR stunt on the part of Air NZ, at a time when an increasing number of long-haul fliers are reconsidering the environmental and economic viability of such travel.

So let's take a closer look at all the claims and promises made as a result of this test-flight

First-up, the 747 used was not powered entirely by this biofuel.

In fact, just one of the engines was fed a 50/50 blend of the biofuel and regular Jet-A1.

So it was actually running mostly on good old jet fuel with only 25% of its thrust being delivered by a "bio-ish" fuel blend.

That means only 12.5% of the total contribution to powering the plane came from a bio-source but, to be fair, that would still be a significant saving if the entire world's airline fleet were able to make such a switch.

So where does the biofuel component come from?

Apparently it's a plant called jatropha (Wikipedia) which is virtually a weed in some places.

The seeds of this plant are rich in an oil that can be used as a biofuel to replace products such as diesel. In fact, some countries (such as the Philippines and India) already use jatropha oil as a supplement to their diesel.

Sounds great eh?

Even better, this plant will grow (like a weed) in poor soils so it need not displace food crops in many areas.

So what could possibly be wrong with Jatropha?

Well unfortunately (wouldn't you know it), some of the downsides of this route to biofuel have been carefully overlooked by Air NZ's PR people when they wrote their wonderful press release.

For a start, Jatropha is actually toxic. This pretty much explains why it's so resistant to pests -- nothing really wants to eat a plant that will kill it.

And then there's the issue of soil depletion...

Yes, jatropha will grow in poor soils but in doing so, it strips that soil of the few nutrients available.

Over the break I heard an Air NZ spokesperson saying that this was a great fuel because it also meant that poor countries like Africa could earn money from it. Unfortunately, those are also countries which are dramatically short of food for their people.

The problem with this is that some of these regions only have poor soils so jatropha, if grown on a commercial basis, will still displace food crops and by stripping the soil of much-needed nutrients, will make it even harder for those people to grow the food they need.

When you look at the sheer area of land required to produce allow even tiny amounts of this stuff to be used in jet-fuel, the picture gets worse.

Do you know how much jet fuel the world's airlines consume each year?

Well, in 2006, it was an astonishing 230 billion litres! (extrapolated from the figures in this press release).

If you do the math... replacing just 10% of this dino-based jet fuel with jatropha oil would require the sequestering of some 460 million hectares (assuming 500-l/hectare) (or 4.6 million square kilometres) of land just for crop production.

Hands up anyone who knows the area of the continent of Africa....

Well, according to this reference it's a paltry 30 million square kilometres.

That's 15% of the total landmass of the content of Africa that would need to be set-aside to provide just 10% of the 2006 demand for Jet-A1.

If you eliminate those areas that are simply too arid for jatropha and those which are home to important animal species, it's likely that this 15% would rise to 30% or more.

What would the creation of such a huge monoculture do to the continent's environment?

And what would we do once the soil in those areas became so depleted that it was no longer able to sustain even jatropha as a crop?

I'm sorry but from the research I've done, jatropha might be a useful localised fuel-supplement (as in India and the Philippines) but it's not going to provide any sensible replacement for jet fuel.

Air NZ have (IMHO) engaged in a rather dishonest publicity stunt to try and attract the world's greenies to its brand. Is that honest? Is it ethical?

No, it's *marketing*.

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