Waste has been identified as a ‘particularly desirable’ feedstock in a technical paper published at the launch of an industry wide initiative to try and speed up the commercialisation of aviation biofuels in Europe.

The partners participating in the initiative - Biofuel Flightpath - include the European Commission, Airbus, leading European airlines and European biofuel producers.

The partners say that the initiative is a roadmap with clear milestones, which targets an annual production of two million tonnes of sustainably produced biofuel for aviation by 2020.

Under the initiative, the biofuel will be produced in Europe from European sourced feedstock material and commits members to support and promote the production, storage and distribution of sustainably produced drop-in biofuels for use in aviation. It also targets establishing appropriate financial mechanisms to support the construction of “first of a kind” advanced biofuel production plants.

According to the paper, the main biomass sources are forestry and agricultural residues, waste materials and energy crops, with wastes and residues being particularly desirable as they diversify the range of feedstocks used.

If cellulosic energy crops or vegetable oils are used as a feedstock, the sustainability of raw materials depends on their production, in particular with regards to land use. Ultimately the paper says that the sustainability of a particular biofuel will be determined on a case by case evaluation of the entire supply chain.

In the UK, waste to fuel specialist, Solena, is developing a waste to biojet facility using plasma gasification technology combined with Fischer Tropsch syntheses. The facility is planned to produce 50,000 tonnes per year of biojet fuel, with full production by 2014. The technical paper argues that this process has potential to be replicated in other European sites.

To deploy 2M tonnes of aviation biofuels in the EU by 2020 initiative says that it needs:

• Widely available supply of sustainably produced oils
  
• 9 plants with advanced technologies producing biofuels from lignocellulosic biomass, agricultural residues and waste streams 3 billion Euros.

“This is a unique opportunity to create the first industrial venture ever introducing sustainable biofuels for commercially competitive operations. The Commission therefore fully supports all efforts in this direction and will actively contribute to their success. They are fully in line with our European Strategic Energy Technology Plan.”, said Günter H. Oettinger, European Commissioner for Energy.

Airbus president and chief executive officer, Tom Enders said: “Airbus supports the speeding up of the commercialisation of sustainable biofuels for use in aviation. Our catalyst role is to bring together stakeholders such as advanced biofuel producers, airlines and lawmakers in value chains, in order to achieve this common goal more quickly. Only by working together can we meet our ambitious target to make air transportation truly sustainable.”