At the Eco-Aviation Conference in Washington, Air New Zealand’s Chief Pilot Captain David Morgan announced the company’s findings on a test flight from last December. Powered by a combination of biofuel and jet fuel, the test resulted in a fuel savings of 1.2%. It also cut CO2 emissions by over 60%!

While a 1.2% fuel savings doesn’t seem like much, that is over 1 ton of fuel!

The test was conducted using a commercial 747-400 fitted with Rolls Royce engines. Rolls Royce had certified the fuel — a 50:50 blend of standard Jet A1 fuel and synthetic paraffinic kerosene derived from jatropha oil.

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The venerable Rolls-Royce, maker of some of the finest motorcars, engines and turbines in the world, will be sea-testing tidal power turbines off the coast of the UK beginning this summer.

According to company officials, Rolls-Royce along with a company called Tidal Generation Limited, will begin trials of a half-megawatt (MW) turbine this summer. Rolls has also entered a separate R&D partnership to build and test a 1 MW version that should be in the water in about 18 months.

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The flight lasted two hours and ran one of the plane’s Rolls-Royce engines on the jatropha biodiesel blend. Air New Zealand has previously stated that they want to become the world’s most sustainable airline and hopes that by 2013, 10% of its flights will be powered by biofuel blends such as the jatropha biodiesel blend used in this test flight.

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On December 3rd, Air New Zealand will be the first commercial airline to power one of its jets with a second generation non-food biofuel made from the Jatropha plant. Jatropha is viewed as having a huge potential as a major source of oil for sustainable biofuel production.

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Propeller planes aren’t exactly known as the pinnacle of aircraft luxury, but a new propeller engine currently being designed by Rolls-Royce makes up in efficiency what it lacks in comfort. The company claims that the engine could save an airline three million dollars and 10,000 tons of CO2 per year if it is introduced on 100-200 seater planes.

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The aviation industry is facing unprecedented growth in fuel costs and growing pressure to curb emission levels. As a result, research programs, joint ventures, and public-private partnerships have all been launched to come up with new forms of jet fuel. Rolls-Royce and British Airways are the most recent companies to announce a research partnership to study the feasibility of dramatically expanding the use of the alternative fuels.

Jet fuel (kerosene) now ranks as the third-highest petroleum product in demand and its growth rate outpaces that of GDP. Kerosene is the current fuel of choice for jet fuel because It is widely available and can tolerate a wide range of temperatures. The demand for kerosene on the global market has caused its price to double in the last 12 months alone. Growth in demand for kerosene is being driven, in part, by a growing culture of mobility and its transportation fuels byproducts in the rapidly growing economies of Asia, but also because of the added pressure of American military fuel consumption in the Iraq war. As global energy consumption is predicted to grow 50 percent by 2050, the aviation industry is wising-up to the notion that fuel prices are not coming down any time soon.

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