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Just How Well Did Biofuels Perform in the Air?

By Brett Snyder

Updated on: June 2, 2009 / 7:00 PM EDT / MoneyWatch

There have been plenty of biofuel flight tests over the last few months, but we haven't had any definite results . . . until now. And the results are pretty impressive.

Late last week, Air New Zealand announced the results of its test, which used a 50/50 blend of jatropha and regular jet fuel to power one engine on a 747 back in January. Yes, I know I've written a lot about those guys lately, but trust me, this is interesting.

Looking at the results, they were able to calculate what the impact would be on a 12 hour flight on a 747 using only the 50/50 blend for every engine instead of straight Jet-A fuel. Here's what they found:

Fuel burn would drop by 1.2 percent, or 1.43 tons
CO2 emissions would drop 60 to 75 percent, or around 4.5 tons

In case it's not clear, these are amazing results, especially since it's only a 50/50 blend. They were actually better than what was originally expected.

But don't think that we'll all be flying on jatropha-powered planes in the near future. There's a lot of work that has to be done and money that has to be invested before there's a truly sustainable biofuel harvested in enough quantity to have a real impact, but the precedent is certainly exciting.