Air France launches its campaign to protect the environment and carries out the first test of a commercial flight with “green” fuel. The experiment took place yesterday on flight AF6129 connecting Paris-Orly to Toulouse, carried out with a biofuel that cuts CO2 emissions into the atmosphere by half.
Lufthansa, KLM and Aeromexico they had already carried out similar operations, but the results had never been so significant. But how did Air France do it? The French company has not limited itself to the use of biofuel. In fact, to achieve the 50% reduction of CO2 compared to a traditional flight, it was necessary to play on other expedients.
First, Air France has lightened the weight of its aircraft, and then instructed his pilots a choose optimized trajectories so as not to waste fuel on useless manoeuvres. In this regard, a European project, called Cesar, is also in the pipeline to reorganize air traffic and trajectories in particular. But in order to achieve it, 20 billion euros of investments are needed. France, meanwhile, however, has moved forward.
In addition to the weight of the aircraft and the trajectories, obviously the choice of biofuel also has a significant influence, in this case provided by SkyNRG, subsidiary of KLM. Bertand Lebel, CEO of the Air France-KLM holding is delighted: "It is a pedagogical and awareness-raising project even before an industrial one", explains Lebel, who however does not hide the ostracism on the part of kerosene suppliers in the face of this revolution cultural, which will hardly be accepted by the big world companies. "We obtained the collaboration of Airbus to supply the aircraft with this new fuel only because we were in Toulouse, in Paris this would not have been possible".
Another question, the origin of the biofuel: half of that used in the flight-experiment came from the recycling of oils used. However, the company prefers to avoid using fuel derived from agriculture. “We don't want biokerosene to compete with the agri-food sector,” Lebel explains. Meanwhile, Air France is already thinking about self-production: it wants to open an ecological fuel factory in the Meuse region using forest waste.
However, the French company is still far from hypothesizing a short-term diffusion of this new solution: "At best, we will be able to use biofuel on a regular basis no earlier than 2020".
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