KLM flies first passenger biofuel plane

The Dutch carrier announced this week that they have flown their first biofuel plane that had passengers on board. The jet, which was partly powered by biokerosene, took the one and a half hour flight over the Netherlands had one of its four engines 50 per cent filled with a biokerosene while the other three were fueled with the traditional kerosene. Planes in the future could significantly reduce their CO2 emissions by a massive 80 per cent if proved viable and KLM are hoping to get the go ahead by the end of 2010. Peter Harman, chief executive at KLM, had just one thought which was how quick could they produce the product. This could make flying more sustainable to our future and hopefully the cost to our environment will be much less.

Global warming is a big concern for much of the world today and aircrafts make up for around 2-4 per cent of all CO2 emissions. According to scientists this could lead to 15-20 per cent by the year 2050 and be bad for our environment. On Monday KLM, Spring Associates and North Sea Petroleum created the SkyEnergy consortium which aims to make a larger enough supply of biofuels for the planes of the future. The climate change meeting in Denmark next month will surely have a big part to play in the growth of this new fuel. World leaders are expected to agree on reducing fuel emissions to levels of 2005 by the year 2050 and this will help them in their quest.