Jennifer Holmgren, Honeywell UOP, speaking about aviation biofuels at the Summit

(Photo by Justin Hession/Getty for the Air Transport Action Group)

We’re getting to the end of the day and it has been tremendously exciting to see all the delegates interacting and listening to the comments from the sessions.

One of the major topics focused on this year has been the prospects for alternative fuels for aviation. It’s a little known fact that the industry now has a target for 10% use of biofuels by 2017, which would be an amazing achievement. When I worked on the UK Sustainable Aviation project in 2005, we were told that kerosene would be the only game in town until at least the middle of the next decade. Even the 2006 Update, which did reference alternative fuels, concluded that despite some advances “Notwithstanding the above developments, kerosene is a safe, high energy density fuel and is likely to remain the fuel of choice for the foreseeable future.”  Little could we have known that just three years later a plane would fly with a biofuel mix, and that not only would it prove to be viable, but it would in fact prove to burn even cleaner than kerosene.

There remain many technological and logistical challenges of course before we see biofuel playing a significant role. But the debates in the hall today showed that aviation has faced similar challenges before, and has conquered them.  The Solar Impulse project points the way – albeit even further in the distance – to an even more exciting future. Completely carbon-free flight.

It is events like this which show that the aviation industry has lost none of its pioneering spirit, even in these difficult economic times. Let’s hope the politicians make similarly far-sighted decisions later this year.