This is an excerpt from EERE Network News, a weekly electronic newsletter.
Farm to Fly 2.0: Energy Department Joins Initiative to Bring Biofuels to the Skies
The United States airline industry uses 23 billion gallons of fuels on passenger and cargo airlines annually, and globally, the international airline industry was the source of 777 million tons of carbon emissions in 2013. Fossil fuel costs are the largest expense for the airline industry and, unlike passenger cars, which can run on electricity, liquid fuels are still the only viable fuel source for this sector.
To help address this problem, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, aviation trade organization Airlines for America, and aircraft manufacturer Boeing established the Farm to Fly initiative, which aims to develop a commercially viable aviation biofuel industry for the United States. The program was extended for five years last April with the addition of the Transportation Department’s Federal Aviation Administration and major private partners such as the Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative. The new initiative, now called Farm to Fly 2.0, works to increase the nation’s supply of renewable jet fuel with the end goal of producing about 1 billion gallons of drop-in aviation biofuels a year by 2018. For the complete story, see the EERE Blog.