As carriers worldwide try to lessen their carbon footprint, Emirates says it has successfully flown a test flight with one of its two engines entirely powered by so-called sustainable aviation fuel.
The Boeing 777 flight travelled for just under an hour over the coastline of the United Arab Emirates, after taking off from Dubai International Airport, the world’s busiest for international travel, and heading out into the Persian Gulf before circling to land. The second of the plane’s General Electric Co. engines ran on conventional jet fuel for safety.
“This flight is a milestone moment for Emirates and a positive step for our industry as we work collectively to address one of our biggest challenges — reducing our carbon footprint,” said Emirates’ chief operation officer Adel al-Redha.
Emirates described the sustainable fuel as a blend “that mirrored the qualities of jet fuel.”
It included fuel from Neste, a Finnish firm, and Virent, a US-based company, the latter which describes itself as using plant-based sugars to make the compounds needed for sustainable jet fuel, while Neste’s fuel comes from vegetable oils and animal fats.
Those fuels reduce the release of heat-trapping carbon dioxide typically burned off by engines in flight.
Aviation releases only one-sixth the amount of carbon dioxide produced by cars and trucks, according to World Resources Institute, a non-profit research group based in Washington. However, airplanes are used by far fewer people per day — meaning aviation is a higher per-capita source of greenhouse-gas emissions.
Airplane and engine manufacturers have been designing more-efficient models, in part to help keep down costs of jet fuel — one of the biggest expenses airlines face. Emirates, for instance, used over 5.7 million tons of jet fuel last year alone, costing it US$3.7 billion out of its $17 billion in annual expenses.
But analysts suggest sustainable fuels can be three times or more the cost of jet fuel, likely putting ticket prices even higher as aviation restarts following the lockdowns during the coronavirus pandemic.
It wasn’t immediately clear how much the fuel used in the Emirates’ test flight cost per barrel. Jet fuel cost on average $146 a barrel.