As crews fueled an Alaska Airlines 737 for the first commercial flight using biofuel derived from corn, it was a historic moment felt strongly by third-generation farmer David Kolsrud.
"I didn't think I'd ever see the day when a product I raised would be on an airplane in Seattle," Kolsrud said.
The protein in the corn he grows in South Dakota feeds animals and the carbohydrates now fuel planes, after a company called Gevo created an alcohol-to-jet fuel.
On Tuesday, Alaska ran two demonstration flights from Sea-Tac Airport, one to San Francisco and another to Washington, D.C., with a 20 percent biofuel mix.
Gevo CEO Pat Gruber went through a six-year approval process.
"There's no safety issue here. I'm going on the plane, by the way," Gruber said.
Alaska demonstrated a different type of biofuel in 2011, which worked fine but was expensive.
The airline says for the two-flight demonstration, it is paying six times the price of regular fuel.
Costs are expected to drop as production ramps up.
"We should be in the realm of cost competitive with fossil based resources," Gruber said.
How long will that take? "A couple three years I think," Gruber said.
Both Alaska and Sea-Tac say they want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The airport is studying a system to deliver biofuel to planes.
"We intend to show our sincere desire for a large quantity of biofuels to be produced so that we can start using them not just on demonstration flights but on all of our flights," said Joseph Sprague, of Alaska Airlines.
Alaska plans to do another demonstration this fall using biofuels from forest products.
It hopes by 2020, it will be able to regularly fuel planes with biofuels at least at one of its airports.
Cox Media Group
