Filed under: Transportation Alternatives , Green Daily , Pacific Region Airlines all over the world are finding themselves under increased pressure to lower their carbon footprints, and saving a buck or two (million) in the process certainly wouldn’t hurt anything. To that end, Air New Zealand has successfully conducted the world’s first commercial test flight with a Boeing 747-400 powered by Rolls-Royce jet engines. According to reports , everything went exactly as planned without a single problem. This successful test should go a long way towards helping Air New Zealand hit its self-imposed target of displacing 10 percent of its 9 million barrels of fuel used annually with biofuels by 2013. If the company is able to meet that goal, some 400,000 tons of CO 2 could be kept out of the atmosphere. For this flight, one of the jet’s two engines ran on jatrpopha-based oil and the other used normal Jet A1 fuel. Jatropha oil reportedly freezes at a lower temperature than even standard-grade jet fuel and is not used as a food source, making it an ideal choice for aviation biofuels. The oil for these tests was sourced from East Africa and India and is cost competitive with traditional fuels. [Source: Stuff.co.nz ] First commercial biofuel jet test successfully completed yesterday originally appeared on AutoblogGreen on Tue, 30 Dec 2008 13:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

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First commercial biofuel jet test successfully completed yesterday