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A fuel company has created partly recycled jet fuel to reduce carbon emissions.
LanzaTech, which began in New Zealand, developed the fuel in the United States. The product is a mixture of the regular fuel used by aircraft and ethanol from waste gases. It currently consists of only 5% recycled substances, but in time, the recycled portion of the product could be increased to as much as up to 50%.
The fuel was put to the test on a Virgin Atlantic airplane in October. The plane completed its flight from Orlando to London while running on the fuel, proving that the product works. LanzaTech is confident that the fuel could meet up to 20% of fuel demand in the aviation industry while slashing greenhouse gas emissions by 65% in the future.
Impressed by the fuel’s capability, Virgin Atlantic requested the UK government to support LanzaTech. In particular, the British airline called for funding for the three recycled fuel manufacturing plants that LanzaTech proposed to build in the United Kingdom by 2025. This project could produce up to 125 million gallons of the partly recycled fuel annually.
While revolutionary, LanzaTech was not the first to attempt creating recycled jet fuel. In 2017, British Airways had plans to open a recycled fuel manufacturing plant in Essex. Called the Green Sky Project, the plant would have converted more than 633,000 tons of waste into fuel. Moreover, it would have been able to cut down carbon emissions equivalent to those released by 150,000 cars. However, the project fell through because it did not have government support.