Boeing betting on tobacco as new aviation fuel source

Boeing is getting into the tobacco business. The airplane maker is part of a joint venture to develop aviation fuel from a new, hybrid tobacco plant.

The goal is to cut carbon emissions and reduce the demand for petroleum-based fuel. Every year, the commercial aviation industry uses about 60 billion gallons of jet fuel.

“Boeing has been very deeply involved in the testing of bio-fuels, certainly, in our own planes but the biggest challenge for bio-fuel is that there is not enough of it around the world,” said Boeing’s Jessica Kowal.

Boeing is teaming up with South African Airways and alternative fuel maker Sky NRG to test-farm the new variety of tobacco plant.

“The exciting thing about using this type of tobacco to make bio-fuel is that you can replace the tobacco that is grown for smoking products, cigarettes, with an energy crop that can be used to make jet fuel,” said Kowal.

The expectation is that bio-fuel will become a price-competitive alternative aviation fuel that cuts pollution.

“You can reduce carbon emissions on a gallon for gallon basis by 50-80 percent compared to petroleum and that’s a significant reduction in carbon emissions,” Kowal explained.

The challenge for Boeing and commercial airlines is to expand the global supply of bio-fuel.

“To do that, you need to produce bio-fuel regionally considering the local climate and local feed stocks or source materials available and then you hope to supply major airports, that’s where you get the major emissions reduction,” said Kowal.

The hybrid tobacco product, known as Solaris, is less leafy and has more seeds from which they extract an oil that is used to produce the bio-fuel, according to Kowal. South Africa wants to start blending the bio-fuel into its regular aviation fuel by October of next year.

In the Pacific Northwest, Boeing has been part of an effort to produce aviation fuel from timber waste and forest byproducts.