A huge success story is being written in aviation. An industry that has been extremely slow to decarbonise can boast a step towards going green. The first transatlantic aircraft powered by alternative fuel took off on its maiden voyage on Tuesday, 28 November. The machine departed from London Heathrow Airport, with its final destination being New York's J.F. Kennedy Airport.

The aircraft, owned by Virgin Atlantic, is powered by sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). This fuel can be produced from crops, household waste or cooking oils. The first-ever sustainable transatlantic aircraft has been filled with 50 tonnes of SAF, 12% of which is waste from US corn production and 88% of which comes from waste fats.

Several companies worked on the project, including BP and Rolls-Royce. Previously, sustainable jet fuel has been used in small quantities to power jets, but at the time it was mixed with conventional fuel.

However, Dr Guy Gratton, associate professor of aviation and the environment at Cranfield University, is cooling his enthusiasm about the first "green flight". Speaking to the BBC, he said: "We can't produce a majority of our fuel requirements this way because we just don't have the feedstocks. And even if you do, these fuels are not true 'net zeros'."

Gratton also added that SAF must be seen as a "a stepping stone towards future, genuinely net zero technologies."

"This might be e-fuels [which are manufactured using captured carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide, together with hydrogen], it might be hydrogen, it might be some technologies that we still really only have at the laboratory stage," Gratton admitted as quoted by the BBC.

The UK government plans to require 10% of aviation fuel to be SAF by 2030, the BBC reports. However, environmentalists argue that this will not solve the problem of air pollution. The only real chance to pollute the environment less with aviation fuels is to reduce the number of flights.

Source: BBC