Qantas Airlines has signed a ‘farm to flight’ deal to grow a Canadian oilseed crop – used to make renewable jet fuel – in Australia.
It is partnering with Quebec’s Agrisoma Biosciences to bring Carinata, a non-food seed, to Australian farms. The ‘high-quality oil’ it produces being ideally suited to making clean aviation fuel.
“Our long-term goal with this partnership is to grow the crop at a target of 400,000 hectares which will ultimately produce more than 200 million litres of bio jet fuel for the airline,” said Steven Fabijanski, Agrisoma’s President and CEO.
Qantas said it will use Agrisoma’s biofuel next year to ‘operate the world’s first bio-fuel flight between the United States and Australia’.
“We are constantly looking for ways to reduce carbon emissions across our operations but when it comes to using renewable jet fuel, until now, there has not been a locally grown option at the scale we need to power our fleet,” added Alison Webster, CEO Qantas International.
Qantas also announced last month, that by 2020, its aircraft in Los Angeles will be powered by biofuels, to cut emissions on the airlines services between America and Australia.
