Greeny News

The airline is converting millions of tonnes of household waste into fuel for reactors but can the aviation industry to solve the emissions problem?

The aviation industry has often seemed to be in denial about climate change, lobbying hard in the UK for a third runway at Heathrow and soft stop attacks against European Union emissions.

But British Airways is moving forward with a plan that aims to make half a million tonnes of household waste in London 50,000 tons of aviation fuel. I'll let you decide if this is greenwashing or not: Here are some of the details

The factory is based in East London and 80 trucks per day is paid off in a plasma chamber, which arrives at 5000 C. The gas obtained is converted into fuel for aircraft, Jonathon Counsell, director of environment at BA, I said at the conference World Biofuels Markets in Rotterdam. The plant should be pumping fuel from 2015, still have enough energy to generate 33 MW of electricity, he said.

The output is only 2% of fuel needs during World BA, but Counsell said. "The first floor is always the hardest If we can make the economy work, we will build two, three, four, five, very quickly." He said that London produces 20 million tons of waste per year, tons and 200m in the UK.

Counsell asked why this should reassure those who worry about the growing contribution of aviation to climate change, when BA and others seem to be moved to act. "We accept that we are a major source of emissions, and growing," he said. "The action is to earn our right to grow."

on biofuels, says that "no alternative" liquid fuels, if industry is to meet its own target of a 50% reduction in emissions by 2050 (from 2005).

"When we look a few decades, the energy landscape for our industry is not healthy," Darrin Morgan, Boeing director of aviation development, he said. "Fuel is now the number one cost to industry of the airplane, most people. What was the number three or four. This cost will reduce the ability of our customers buy our planes."
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