China’s Hainan airlines flies to US on cooking oil

China’s biggest private airline has powered its first commercial international flight using biofuels, flying on a route from Beijing to Chicago on a 15% blend of used cooking oil.

The fuel was sourced from Zhennan Refining and Chemical – a subsidiary of state oil company Sinopec – and comes a year ahead of plans by the Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific to launch flights to the US using biofuels.

While the Hainan flight received some press attention, it is far from the first airline to use biofuels as an alternative way of powering passenger flight since international aviation bodies allowed the use of biofuels in 2011.

United Airlines and KLM have regularly been using biofuels in commercial flights for the past year and the International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO) estimates more than 40,000 flights have flown using renewable fuels.

The use of biofuels in aviation is expected to expand rapidly following international targets to have carbon neutral growth in emissions from 2020 and a 50% cut in emissions under 2005 levels by 2050.

According to analysts Lux Research biofuels will account for 56% of the expected cut.

The target equates to emitting 200 million mt of CO2 by 2050 compared to a business-as-usual projection of 2.1 billion mt.