Whilst China shows increasing commitment to the global efforts in the battle against climate change, the Chinese aviation sector has been forging ahead with developments in biofuels and air traffic control, both vital pillars to the industry’s strategy for a sustainable future for flight.

This week, an announcement came from Honeywell’s UOP LCC for plans to collaborate with aviation and refining leaders including PetroChina, Air China and Boeing, to evaluate and demonstrate sustainable aviation biofuels in China. The team, which includes government agencies and associations along with aviation and biofuel companies, will be looking into feedstock harvesting and processing, the establishment of refining capacity for commercial production, and the development of the infrastructure to store, deliver and dispense biofuels. Their aim: develop a complete supply chain for affordable, safe and domestically produced aviation biofuels in China, which will in turn result in a substantial reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from the aviation industry. UOP has also signed an agreement to work with PetroChina, Air China and Boeing to evaluate and plan a biofuel demonstration flight in China. The flight will run on a 50:50 blend of petroleum-based jet fuel and ‘Green Jet Fuel’ – a sustainable, non-food feedstocks, which offers a reduction of up to 80% in GHG emissions!

Elsewhere in China, the Civil Aviation Authority is planning an upgrade of Chek Lap Kok's Air Traffic Control system to support ADS-B technology – a next generation air transportation system which gives pilots and navigators a better sense of its position compared with the present radar-based system, easing congestion and as such minimising both the time that aircraft spends taxiing and circling airports whilst waiting to land. Such measures are expected to save around 1,655 tonnes of jet fuel each year at an airport, which translates into savings of US$1.17 million in fuel costs for the airlines using Hong Kong International Airport and a reduction of 5,230 tonnes of CO2 a year.

This week, the JAL Group was awarded the "Eco-First" title by the Ministry of the Environment of Japan for the airline's various environmental conservation initiatives. These initiatives include fleet renewal, engine washing, the use of ecological, advanced flight operation methods such as User Preferred Route and Continuous Descend Approach, and the development of commercially-viable biofuel. What’s more, JAL has been spreading its environmental efforts further afield through its contribution to projects such as forest-fire surveillance, atmospheric air research and environmental education. So with the “Eco-First” must come an "Eco-First Pledge”; for JAL, this means achieving a 23% reduction in CO2 emissions in the year 2020, compared with levels in 2005.

Elsewhere, the South-African airmotive company ADEPT has stepped up the plate with the launch of their new light aircraft engine at Virginia Airport this week. The new liquid-cooled aircraft engine can operate on either biofuel or liquid petroleum gas, resulting in an engine with significantly lower lead, Nitrous Oxide and CO2 emissions, as well as reduced noise levels.

Innovations such as this are a reflection of the hard work that has been taking place throughout the aviation industry in the collective efforts to combat climate change – a subject that is now present in all discussions within the industry. An ICAO Colloquium on Aviation and Climate Change held last week brought together stakeholders from across the aviation industry as well as key government representatives to discuss the impact of aviation on the environment, what measures are being taken and what more can be done. The event provided a great opportunity for players from across the industry to demonstrate their own initiatives, providing a platform to share best practices and incentivising other businesses to follow suit. One example comes from Qatar Airways who, at the Colloquium, announced plans to be the first airline to be operating with 100% synthetic jet fuel by 2014 – a fuel made from a mix between gas-to-liquid and biomass-to-liquid blends, reducing the consumption of non-renewable petroleum based fuel and as such reducing the airline’s emissions of CO2.

This week, Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut has been attracting attention with his latest project ‘Hydrogenase’ – a futuristic design for modern buildings in the form of giant airships suspended under balloons covered in algae. These emission-free airships are powered entirely by hydrogen generated from sunlight and CO2 and are designed to hover over the South China Sea near Shanghai. Covered in flexible photovoltaic cells and wind turbines, Hydrogenase ships run on "micro-seaweed" and are designed to take off and land just about anywhere. While this may sound like a bizarre concept, Callebaut’s designs actually demonstrate just how much potential there is for the use of second generation biofuels in aviation. As Callebaut points out, the energy obtained by farmed algae is much greater than that of any current biodiesel or bioethanol production - he reckons 1000 litres of hydrogen can be farmed from just 330 grams of micro-seaweed generated chlorophyll. What’s more, algae can be grown in large quantities in water that would normally be undrinkable and uninhabitable, meaning its production can take place without competing with resources for food or water.

And just to prove it is possible, Lufthansa has announced its plans to start running its engines on some flights on a mixture of biofuel and kerosene within two years, making it one of the world's first airlines to mix biofuel with traditional kerosene on commercial flights. Lufthansa’s principal aim is to reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions and costs by reducing their use of traditional aviation fuel, yet the initiative will also help in international efforts to move towards resource security by reducing our reliance on non-renewable fuels.

This week has also seen big developments in Brazil as an announcement came for the creation of Abraba - the Brazilian Alliance for Aviation Biofuels. The alliance centres its efforts on dialogues with creators of public policy, looking to promote the development and certification of sustainable biofuels for use in air transport.

This Wednesday, representatives from airports across the U.S. came together for a ‘Green Airports’ seminar, hosted by South Carolina’s  Department of Health and Environmental Control and launched under the Green Airports Initiative. The seminar educated airports on how they can become more environmentally friendly and reduce their operating costs through the promotion of alternative fuels, recycling initiatives and energy efficiency.

Dallas/Fort Worth International made a timely demonstration of how airports can make an impact in this way by moving up the rankings on the American EPA Top 20 Local Government list of large green power purchasers. The airport was recognised by the EPA for its commitment to protecting the environment by proactively choosing to switch away from traditional sources of electricity generation and support cleaner renewable energy alternatives. The airport currently purchases 60 million kilowatt-hours of green power annually, which is enough green power to meet 20% of the airport's electricity use, and resulting in significant savings both in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

Alice Springs Airport in Australia has launched their own energy project, with works underway building a solar power station. The power station will deliver approximately 600 megawatt hours of electricity directly to the airport's internal electricity grid, making up roughly 28% of the airport's electricity demand and reducing the airport's carbon emissions by around 470 ton of CO2 per year.

Elsewhere, South America’s TAM Airlines has been busy preparing for non-commercial demonstration flight later this year, marking the continent’s progress in biofuel development. The flight will take place on an Airbus A320 equipped with CFM56-5B engines and will run on a mixture of aviation biofuel produced using jatropha oil. According to research from Michigan Technological University, a flight of this kind can achieve a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of between 65 and 80% compared to petroleum-derived jet fuel.

As we head towards the weekend, I have seen a couple of video clips that might be of interest. First, Ayesha Durgahee from CNN reports on ways some airlines are reducing their carbon emissions.

And my old colleagues at Auckland Airport in New Zealand have produced this video overview of their sustainability programme.

Next week, I will be blogging live from the ICAO Environment Colloquium - a gathering of world government civil aviation authorities in Montreal to discuss aviation and the environment. Have a great weekend!

On this weekend's edition of CNBC Gateway to the Middle East, reporter Guy Johnson spoke to Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker about his airline's work in the area of sustainable biofuels. The piece starts at 1 minute 30 into this webcast:

Heathrow airport has been working on their latest initiative designed to cut emissions at the same time as improving the comfort and convenience at the airport. This initiative comes in the form of the Urban Light Transport (ULTra) – “a personal rapid transit” system in the form of driverless, electrically-powered "taxi pods" which transport people and their luggage to Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5. The ULTra taxi pods run on their own infrastructure, similar to that of a monorail system and have impressive environmental credentials, offering low emissions, a high level of service, efficient use of space and good value for money. But they do not only sound like something from the future, they actually look like something from a science fiction film. The idea being, to a certain extent, that if the ULTra is going to be around for years to come, its design will have to withstand the test of time!!

Elsewhere at Swansea University scientists have been researching into the aviation fuel of the future – microalgae. These scientists are undertaking a project using algae to create oil from seaweed, and have found that one particular type of algae, a microalgae named Botryococcus braunii algae, can produce particularly high levels of oil – around 50 to 140 tonnes of oil per hectare, compared to biofuel ethanol, which produces about 0.2 tonnes of oil equivalent, and rapeseed which generates around 1.2 tonnes. They are hoping that with their developments, the commercialization of biofuel across Wales will pick-up, especially as businesses become increasingly aware of the problems of relying on our resources of fossil fuels which are rapidly running-out and are known to contribute substantially to global warming.

And finally, to the air traffic management of the future… at ATC Global in Amsterdam on Wednesday, the SESAR Joint Undertaking (SJU) presented results from the European flight demonstrations performed in the framework of the Atlantic Interoperability Initiative to Reduce Emissions (AIRE). The AIRE project looked at inexpensive ways in which airlines, airports and aviation regulators in the U.S. and Europe can cut fuel consumption, carbon emissions and flight times by cooperating more effectively on air traffic management. Whilst undertaking this project, which was designed essentially to test the feasibility of implementing such procedures, engineers were also able to measure concrete fuel and CO2 savings from these procedures. And the results…? Pretty promising! The improvements show savings of more than 400 tons of CO2 on the test flights, which is about the equivalent of the annual CO2 emission of 100 passenger cars!

Actually, they aren’t going to exactly remove the cars from the road, but they will be taking the equivalent of 48,000 car’s carbon emissions out of the atmosphere with a new scheme announced today. They are going to be producing their own biofuel. Out of waste that would otherwise have been put into landfill.

British Airways have teamed up with US-based Solena Group to build a sustainable jet-fuel plant that can convert a variety of waste materials, normally destined for landfill, into aviation fuel. The plant will probably be located in east London and BA say that when it is fully up-and-running, it will be able to convert 500,000 tonnes of waste per year into 16 million gallons of green jet fuel through a process that offers lifecycle greenhouse gas savings of up to 95 per cent compared to traditional jet fuel.

What kind of waste? Well, almost anything organic (i.e. made of carbon) can be used – food waste from household kitchens or hotels and restaurants, industrial waste from food manufacturing plants, paper that can’t be recycled and agricultural waste.

“This volume of fuel would be more than twice the amount required to make all of British Airways' flights at nearby London City Airport carbon-neutral. Put another way, the fuel's reduction in carbon emissions would be the equivalent of taking 48,000 cars off the road per year.”

They plan to have part of their fleet running on this new fuel from 2014. It is a great vote of confidence from an airline to actually invest in this type of scheme and it comes a short while after KLM announced its new venture in the sustainable biofuel area. A good friend of ours, Jonathan Counsell who is Head of Environment at BA spoke to Sky News a short time ago:

But wait, there’s more

The reduction in carbon lifecycle emissions for the aircraft that use this fuel is not the only benefit. As BA said in their press release:

• The plant will emit oxygen, plus small quantities of nitrogen, argon, steam (water vapour), and CO2. The plant itself will be CO2 neutral.
• The left over gas can be used to produce 20MW of excess electricity for export to the national grid or converted into steam to be used in a district heating system.
• The only solid waste product is an inert vitrified slag material, which can be used as an alternative to aggregates used in construction.
• Through reducing landfill by around 500,000 tonnes per year, local authorities will save £36 million in landfill.
• Four sites in the east of London are among those under consideration for the construction of the bio-jet fuel plant.  The scheme will lead to the creation of up to 1,200 jobs in the area and could reduce significantly local authority landfill tax bills.

- Image by Flickr user caribb

This week the aviation industry has had its focus on developing alternative energy both on the ground and in the air. East Midlands Airport announced plans to have four giant wind turbines built by the end of this year, which will be used to generate electricity for the airport. The turbines will generate 900 kilowatt hours of electricity – without any emissions to pollute the environment – which is enough to cover about 10% of the airport's energy needs. This project is part of a wider plan to make the airport's ground operations carbon neutral.

Airports in the US, in Texas, Dallas, Las Vegas and Houston, have the same goal of carbon neutrality, but are concentrating on a different initiative to take them there. Working together with Clean Energy Fuels, the airports have all set up major new airport compressed natural gas (CNG) fueling business. At these airports, Clean Energy will build a public access CNG fueling stations which will support the growing fleets of off-airport parking shuttle fleets, on-airport courtesy shuttle vehicles as well as taxis and private CNG fleet vehicles.

A new report has been published which outlines various case studies looking at the efforts that have been made over the past years by airports aimed at cutting emissions and improving efficiency… just so they know their efforts are not being ignored!

This week has also seen a major announcement from Qatar Airways, Qatar Science & Technology Park and Qatar Petroleum, with the support of Airbus. These companies are to jointly develop production of an alternative fuel for aircraft. Following a feasibility study into bio fuel seven months ago, the initiative now establishes the Qatar Advanced Biofuel Platform to develop the fuel. Initially Qatar Airways will be a dedicated end-user, but there is a view to opening the production out to other airlines and companies. Yet whilst deals are being struck on the ground, it is not without movement in the air - this initiative comes just months after Qatar Airways completed the world's first commercial flight powered by a Gas-to-Liquid (GTL) fuel blend. And again, efforts are not unnoticed - even Qatar's deputy premier Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah has shown excitement over the “tremendous” prospects this work has shown!

And there’s one more… monthly magazine Air Transport World selected Air New Zealand as its Airline of the Year for 2010. As well as recognition for its commitment to safety and operational excellence, the airline was specifically praised for its environmental initiatives, including conducting the world's first sustainable biofuel flight. While they are not doing it for the praise of awards, it does go to show that being an environmental leader is recognised.