The world's first commercial flight partly fuelled by recycled waste has crossed the Atlantic
The fuel takes waste gases from industrial factories and gives them a second life. Image: REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale
Stay up to date:
Future of the Environment
Across The Pond
It’s not every day that the founder of an airline greets one of its planes upon touchdown.
But Virgin Atlantic founder Richard Branson had a reason to be on the tarmac after his airline’s Flight VS16 landed in London Thursday morning, fresh from a transatlantic journey from Orlando, Florida: It was the world’s first commercial flight partially powered by recycled waste.
Second Life
The fuel is the creation of California’s LanzaTech, which captures and converts carbon emissions from steel mills, oil refineries, and other manufacturing sites into fuels and chemicals using a proprietary process powered by microbes.
“This fuel takes waste, carbon-rich gases from industrial factories and gives them a second life so that new fossil fuels don’t have to be taken out of the ground,” said Branson in a press release.
Fill ‘Er Up
LanzaTech’s fuel comprised just five percent of the jet fuel powering the Virgin Atlantic plane, but that figure could increase to 50 percent — in April, an organization that sets aviation industry fuel standards approved LanzaTech’s sustainable jet fuel for use as a 50/50 blend with traditional fossil fuels. Now that they know it works, airlines can now try using it in larger quantities.
LanzaTech believes it could meet 20 percent of the commercial aviation industry’s fuel demand using just the carbon it could capture from the world’s eligible steel mills. And considering air travel accounts for 2 to 3 percent of global CO2 emissions, this fuel could make a not-insignificant dent in the amount of carbon we pump into the atmosphere.
Don't miss any update on this topic
Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.
License and Republishing
World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.
The Agenda Weekly
A weekly update of the most important issues driving the global agenda
You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in our emails. For more details, review our privacy policy.
More on Nature and BiodiversitySee all
Johnny Wood and Madeleine North
October 3, 2024
Andreas Obrecht and Akanksha Khatri
September 25, 2024
Gill Einhorn and Rosie Ponting
September 25, 2024
Katherine M. Crosman
September 24, 2024
Allison Voss and Shivin Kohli
September 24, 2024