New Jet Fuel

It always pays to read carefully. A high ranking member of our team here at the Ag Information Network Of The West sent me an email and it said "this is right up your alley". I just glanced at the first few words and it said Farm waste and animal fats. How was I going to take that. Farm waste and animal fats are right up my alley? However, reading a little further I found out that Farm waste and animal fats are going to be helping power a United jet. Actually, Susan Allen, the aforementioned member of the team, is a relentless researcher and reads everything there is to do with agriculture among other things. So this New York Times article tells us that "Sometime this summer, a United Airlines flight will take off from Los Angeles International Airport bound for San Francisco using fuel generated from farm waste and oils derived from animal fats.

For passengers, little will be different — the engines will still roar, the seats in economy will still be cramped — but for the airlines and the biofuels industry, the flight will represent a long-awaited milestone: the first time a domestic airline operates regular passenger flights using an alternative jet fuel.

The part that is different for me is the fact that the alternative fuel isn't ethanol, or camelina. I would that we have done a thousand stories on those alternative fuels.. For now suffice it to say that Farm waste and animal fats fuel can cut an airline's carbon emissions by 80 percent compared with traditional jet fuel.