Just 8 months after Virgin Atlantic flew a 747 from London to Amsterdam on coconut and babassu nut biofuel, Air New Zealand has done it also.

Air New Zealand, Boeing, Rolls-Royce and Honeywell modified the engines on a 747-400 to run on half Jet A1 fuel and half jatropha oil. The jatropha plant is pretty remarkable. This common plant from India produces nuts that contain 30 to 40 percent oil that can be converted into biofuel. It has been used previously to power cars, but this is the first time it has been used for an airplane. 

What would be more impressive though is an airplane powered by a real Mr. Fusion from Back to the Future. You’d just need to stop be a landfill to refuel.

Using excess or leftover corn as a fuel source sure sounded like a good idea, especially here in the U.S. Let’s get our farmers from, I don’t, Iowa, to set aside a certain percentage of arable land for the production of fuel corn. (The term “fuel corn” may or may not exist, but it should if it doesn’t.) This corn, rather than being used for food, would be used for the production of ethanol, an alcohol that can power combustion engines. Follow the logic: grow corn, which is fairly inexpensive to do, create ethanol, power car engines. Simple, direct and seemingly a possible solution to our reliance on foreign oil and all the bonus adventurism that comes with that. Grow corn at home, or meddle in other people’s affairs for access to oil?

Onward! to our bright, biofueled future. Wait, what?

There’s a word in that opening paragraph that suddenly no longer applies, apparently. What if all that corn (and other sources of biofuel) is no longer “leftover”? What if, you know, we should be using all that corn (etc.) to feed people? (Food used to feed people? Madness!) What if the price of food, for some reason, skyrocketed, and the poorer peoples of the world look longingly at all that “excess” corn being used to fuel your dumb automobile?

It would seem we, Westerners, are stuck between a rock and a rock. Big rocks. With sharp edges.

If you read any of the Big Papers, like the Financial Times, the Guardian or the New York Times—please don’t watch cable “news,” which has devolved into infotainment—you’ll have noticed an uptick in the number of stories covering some sort of food crisis. The Readers Digest version of the crisis is, as a result rising oil prices (increases transportation costs), poor climate (lots of droughts in food-producing regions) and—ding ding ding—the diversion of food-for-food to food-for-fuel has increased the price of food around the world. My local coffee place recently increased the price of a small cup of coffee by 25 cents. I mention that not for the “woe is me” factor (woe unto me for altogether different reasons), but to illustrate the fact that rising food costs isn’t merely a problem “over there.”

So we’re looking at quite the dicey situation. The world’s poor (40 percent of people live on less than two dollars a day) can no longer afford the most basic of foodstuffs, while the West hums along producing fuel to power its automobiles and other near-luxuries. (I say “near-luxuries” because, frankly, try living without a car in the U.S. outside of a few major cities; they’re “luxuries” compared to food. Call me crazy.) What should we do, how should the West react? Personally, I’m a cynical jerk, and I truly believe Americans are more concerned with who’s going to win American Idol or whether or not they’ll 100 percent GTA IV than whether some invisible foreigner can afford a loaf of bread or cup of rice. Not to be a whiny liberal, but you gotta figure most Americas are more concerned with their needs and wants than someone else’s; it’s only rational, I think. So when Americans pay, what, $4 per gallon of gas and they hear about some sort of weird “corn gasoline” that could be cheaper and can be grown in Our Backyard, you try convincing them to keep paying $4 just to save some poor person they’ll never see and never know, certainly never care about, to alter their lifestyle. It’ll take some sort of sticker shock at the supermarket for Americans writ large to even notice any food crisis.

Back to biofuel. There’s so many competing interests here that I’d rather hop on a message board and argue with a 13-year-old from Ohio whether or not the PS3 is “cool” or not. Are we gonna tell Iowa farmers to stop growing heavily subsidized and hugely profitable biofuel corn? Not if you’re an office-seeking politician, you’re not. Remind me again of Clinton, Obama and McCain’s views of ethanol? I have zero faith in politicians standing up to the ethanol pushers. Americans at home certainly aren’t going to support any schemes that prevent them from lowering their petrol bill. More biofuel, then, nuts to the rest of the world.

So we can “go green” (again, I think going green is a load of hogwash given China’s not-give-a-damn attitude toward pollution) and embrace biofuel, which doesn’t put filth into the atmosphere leading to a happy, Greener Earth, or we can actually grow food for food’s sake. I have no idea where I stand, which is how I am politically on most issues. I don’t like the idea of people starving, but if I have to be inconvenienced to make a difference… eh, I’d rather not be inconvenienced.

What dreams may come.

First of all, I think it should be said that the whole corn-as-fuel idea is a red herring when it comes to alternative energy. The corn industry is a bloated mess and throwing the demands of widespread biofuel use into the mix would probably push it beyond the breaking point and make for some really weird corn politics.

That said, if the process of fueling some things with corn is made easier and more efficient, there’s no reason why it couldn’t be used on a limited scale where it’s cost-effective. That’s why I’m glad advances like this one are being made. Dr. Mariam Sticklen at Michigan State University has been researching ways in which the most stubborn part of the corn plant can be easily broken down. She’s come up with three different strains of modified corn, each one with a different method of cellulose breakdown, each copied from a different microorganism.

The corn keeps the breakdown enzymes in vacuoles its stems and leaves, not in its seeds and pollen, which Sticklen says will prevent the plant from fertilizing other crops with the enzyme-producing gene. That doesn’t sound right to me; the gene would be found in the DNA of every cell, regardless of whether that cell produced the breakdown enzyme or not. Of course, unlike her I do not have a PhD in Bioengineering, so I’ll have to defer to her on this one.

You may heave heard about, or even seen first-hand, rising food costs. (As have I—milk is how much?) Just be grateful you’re not a biofuel producer, since those guys are feeling some heat, namely for “crimes against humanity.” That’s a hard accusation to shake, methinks.

Certain individuals are blaming biofuel producers for the high cost of food right now. Why waste foodstuffs producing fuel when people, quite literally, are starving because they cannot afford to buy food? Especially since the whole goal of biofuel—to help reduce the emission of greenhouse gasses in order to prevent global warming—really seems to be a Developed World concern more than anything else. When you’re living in the Developing World with several children to feed, do you really care if the temperature of the Earth has risen by a 1/100th of a degree? It’s just not an immediate, “I have to feed my children today or something bad will happen” concern.

It’s gotten so heated that some are demanding the European Union suspend its subsidization of biofuel. Obviously I’m not a foods scientist, but this quote, addressing what will happen if biofuel subsidies don’t end, from Nestlé’s CEO sounded scary enough:

There will be nothing left to eat

A fine way to start your day.

Why can’t anyone take a dignified mugshot anymore?

This man, David Richardson, was arrested for trying to steal used cooking grease from a Burger King. He was to use the grease for his biofuel Wacky Races car. While I agree he should have been arrested for even going to a Burger King—I’m a Howard Dean-loving, latte-drinking, New York liberal*—he should have known better. Many fast food joints will gladly hand over their used grease for the greater good, else they’ll have to pay someone to truck it off to the landfill (or wherever used grease goes to die).

*No I’m not

A Virgin Atlantic airplane fueled by a coconut and babassu nut biofuel mixture flew from London to Amsterdam at the weekend. It was the first commercial airline to fly on a biofuel mixture, something that Virgin’s Sir Richard Branson said would forever change the way the airline industry operates.

Before you run around, telling your friends that the fuel problem has been solved, know that there’s some caveats. First, though the flight was powered by biofuel, you need a hell of a lot of land to cultivate the needed plants. Do you know of anywhere where you can just cast away existing plants in order to grow the ones used by the fuel? Apparently saltwater-gorwn algae is the holy grail of biofuel, since you wouldn’t need to displace other crops in order to grow it.

Virgin exhibits coconut-powered flying jumbo [The Register]

Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic airline will conduct a test flight at the end of the month wherein a Boeing 747 will fly from London to Amsterdam using an 80/20 blend of conventional fuel and biofuel, respectively. The plane will carry no passengers but will be “the first time a commercial aircraft has flown on biofuel,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Branson announced this little experiment last year and analysts posited that it could be done by the end of 2008. With this experiment, Virgin announced that it’s about 10 months ahead of schedule. How do you like them apples? Not only is something in the technology happening ahead of schedule without being delayed, but a full ten months ahead of schedule.

Here’s more…

From the business perspective, the airlines are under great financial pressure because of soaring fuel costs; the price of crude oil is consistently flirting with $100 per barrel. On the environmental side of things, aircraft represent up to 12 percent of greenhouse gas emissions produced by the U.S. transportation sector, according to the Environmental Protection Agency…

…To get it done, Virgin Atlantic is teaming with Boeing and GE Aviation, maker of the engines that power the airplane. The airline said the GE Aviation CF6 engines used during the flight will not require modifications to burn biofuel, nor will the biofuel have negative effects on the engines.

The fuel used in the flight will be a blend of 80 percent conventional jet fuel, which is essentially kerosene, and 20 percent biofuel. Although the exact type of biofuel to be used has not been disclosed, the airline said it is a form that does not compete with food and freshwater resources.

Exciting, no? We’ll keep an eye out for an exact flight date and update everyone.

Virgin jet to use biofuel blend in test flight [San Francisco Chronicle] via Boing Boing