Tired of skyrocketing jet fuel prices, Virgin Atlantic Airways boss Richard Branson said on Wednesday he plans to turn his back on hydrocarbons and use plant waste to power his fleet.
“We are looking for alternative fuel sources. We are going to start building cellulosic ethanol plants (to make) fuel that is derived from the waste product of the plant,” he told Reuters in an interview in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates.
“It is 100 percent environmentally friendly and I believe it’s the future of fuel, and over the next 20 or 30 years I think it actually will replace the conventional fuel that you get out of the ground.”
Branson did not say where Virgin would build his factories or how economically viable cellulosic ethanol would prove. “We are in the early days,” he admitted.
He said cellulosic ethanol “is the byproduct you get from the waste product (of plants), the bits in the field that get burned up,” as opposed to traditional ethanol, which is produced mainly from corn or sugar cane.
Using organic waste, or biomass, could be substantially cheaper than corn or sugar cane since that waste is not a primary product but simply residue from other agriculture or logging.
Branson was in Dubai, a booming trade and tourism hub, to attend the Abu Dhabi World Leadership summit and to promote a daily service between London and Dubai that Virgin plans to launch in March.
The ethanol idea is part of Branson’s broader plans to cut Virgin’s fuel bill. In September, he said he was looking at building a conventional oil refinery in a bid to ease a global shortage of refined fuel, including jet fuel.
The company operates four airlines with almost 100 aircraft.
“We use around 700 million gallons of fuel a year between the four airlines,” Branson said. “I hope that over the next five to six years we can replace some or all of that” with plant-based ethanol.
