Q: What is your next project concerning sustainable development?
—Emily Lau, USA
A: The answer is really a host of projects running on parallel lines, but if I had to pick one business that needs a nudge down the sustainability path it is probably aviation.
The aviation industry is facing a tough and exciting challenge: creating a new way of doing business that uses less energy, relies on renewable sources of energy and minimises or eliminates harmful waste products—beginning with a sustainable commercial alternative to jet fuel. On terra firma, people can choose to buy hybrid and electric cars, buses and trucks instead of gasoline-powered vehicles, but in the air travellers don’t have the same options. Whether you board a plane at Heathrow, JFK or Narita, it will always be filled with kerosene.
This needs to change. From January 2012 airlines are included in the European Union’s Emissions Trading System (ETS-a cap-and-trade system that allows companies to buy and sell carbon emissions credits), which will increase costs for those based in Europe. Switching airlines to renewable fuels should be a target in the global fight to lower carbon emissions. We need to find a way to simultaneously lower our carbon output and fuel bills-and right away.
Most people in the industry are now aware that it is possible for planes to fly on renewable fuels. In February 2008, one of our Virgin Atlantic aircraft did a test flight from London to Amsterdam using a fuel that mixed 80 per cent kerosene with 20 per cent biofuel-a fuel that was derived from babassu oil and coconut oil, both harvested from trees on established plantations. At the time, then CEO of BA, and current chief executive of BA’s parent company, International Airlines Group, Willie Walsh commented, ‘Saying there is a biofuel available is, to me, a bit of a PR stunt. I wont say [biofuels are the answer] because I don’t believe it’s true.’ Other airlines, including Air New Zealand, Continental Airlines, Japan Airlines, KLM and the UK’s Thomson Airways have since completed similar tests as well. The real challenge is to scale up production of one or two workable fuels and get airlines around the world to use them. Why do the words ‘chicken and egg’ come to mind?
How do you tackle industry-changing innovation? It doesn’t happen overnight. Virgin made a commitment to ‘green’ business more than five years ago, deciding that this was an area that would be good for the planet (and hopefully would pay the bills), so we stayed in contact with innovative start-ups in this field and kept up with the latest developments. Around the same time, Virgin Atlantic pledged to make a 30 per cent carbon reduction per passenger kilometre by 2020, and we also committed to developing and sourcing sustainable, renewable fuels for all our Virgin airline fleets.
Over the past five years, Virgin, our Green Fund and I personally have all invested in a number of such initiatives, including ethanol plants in the US and pioneering biofuel companies such as Gevo and Solazyme. Development is a long, complicated process, with many hurdles to be overcome: the need to find sustainable feed stocks, develop the high-performance fuel and then test and obtain certification for the fuel’s use in aviation engines.
But breakthroughs do happen sometimes, and in late 2011 we made an announcement about what I believe could be one of the biggest steps forward in my lifetime towards developing a scalable, low-carbon aviation fuel. We believe that a fuel we are developing with New Zealand-based LanzaTech should cut Virgin Atlantic’s carbon footprint in half. Simply put: we’ve entered the recycling business, turning much of the waste from chimneystacks into aviation fuel.
This revolutionary fuel production process recycles waste gases, including carbon dioxide, which would otherwise be emitted into the atmosphere. We’re tackling the steel and aluminium industries first: they have a plan in place to capture waste gases from nearly two-thirds of the world’s steel and aluminium mills and convert them into jet fuel.
In the meantime, our goal is to have many Virgin Atlantic planes running on the new low-carbon fuel within three to four years, starting with those flying Shanghai to London and Delhi to London routes, then expanding it around the globe.
For years, people have doubted the practicality of using sustainable fuels-it would be great to prove them wrong. Our hope is that other airlines will be quick to follow Virgin Atlantic’s example and the industry’s carbon footprint will be radically decreased.
Another of our efforts that looks promising is one based in Australia. Virgin Australia has signed a memorandum of understanding with Dynamotive Energy Systems and Renewable Oil to help develop a sustainable aviation biofuel. Our consortium plans to use an accelerated thermal decomposition technology to process mallee, a eucalyptus tree that is grown in many parts of Australia to help control salinity on farmland and that is harvested sustain ably. A demonstration unit that will make biofuels for testing, certification and public trials should be up and running next year and a commercial-scale plant could be operational as early as 2014.
It is vital that plans to develop a sustainable aviation biofuel are truly sustainable and bring wider benefits; in this case improving socio-economic conditions for the Australian farming community and helping the environment. We have pledged to develop jet fuel plant sources in a way that minimises biodiversity impacts and doesn’t deplete food or water sources. We have also promised never to use high-conservation-value areas or native ecosystems for plant source development, and to reduce total lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions.
I have written frequently about the need to find new ways of doing business, and, at Virgin, our many small steps over the years-reaching out to people who had revolutionary ideas, developing our own and seeing how our companies could work together-are starting to turn into industry-changing innovation.
Too many business people say things like, ‘They really should do something about developing alternative fuels’. Well, we decided we simply couldn’t wait for ‘them’ and picked up the ball ourselves. If you are hoping to bring change to your industry, rather than waiting for others why not do the same?