Biofuel from logging scraps powers Alaska Airlines jet on cross-country flight

An Alaska Airlines flight from Seattle to Washington, DC, on Monday was powered with a jet-fuel blend containing 20% renewable biofuel made from Pacific Northwest forest residuals — the limbs and branches that remain after the harvesting of managed forests. Billed as the first commercial flight running partly on wood, the alternative jet fuel was produced through the research efforts of the Northwest Advanced Renewables Alliance. Led by Washington State University, the group aims to build a sustainable supply chain for aviation biofuel using the leavings from logging operations. The wood came from Washington, Oregon and Montana, including forests managed by Weyerhaeuser, the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe and the Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribes. Biofuels company Gevo used patented technologies to convert cellulosic sugars derived from wood waste into renewable isobutanol at a fermentation facility in St. Joseph, Mo., then further converted that at its biorefinery in Silsbee, Texas. The resultant fuel is certified as equivalent to regular aircraft-jet fuel produced from oil. Alaska used 1,080 gallons of the biofuel on the flight. The airline said that replacing 20% of its entire fuel supply at Sea-Tac Airport with the same fuel would reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by about 142,000 metric tons of CO2 per year. However, for now the biofuel remains much more expensive than regular jet fuel, so it won’t be used for day-to-day flying.<br/>