To coincide with the UN Climate Summit taking place in New York today Scandinavian carrier Finnair will operate a flight from Helsinki to the Big Apple using environmentally sustainable biofuel including recycled cooking oil.
The biofuel mixture powering the Airbus A330 includes a proportion of cooking oil recycled from restaurants.
The biofuel was provided by SkyNRG Nordic, a joint venture partnership between SkyNRG and Statoil Aviation.
Finnair said it hopes to establish a biofuel hub at Helsinki airport to develop a supply chain and lower costs of sustainable biofuel.
"The UN Climate Summit is an important gathering to fight climate change, and we wanted to take this opportunity to highlight the climate benefits of more widespread adoption of environmentally sustainable biofuels in aviation," said Kati Ihamaki, Finnair’s vice-president of sustainable development.
Finnair first tested a biofuel mix in the air in 2011 but at twice the cost of conventional jet fuel, it is not economically viable for commercial airlines to operate exclusively.
"If the price of oil rises and biofuels become cheaper, there will hopefully be a day when we’ll be able to replace at least some of the fossil fuels with fuels made of renewable and waste material," said Finland’s minister for International Development Pekka Haavisto.
I’m happy that Finnair is showing leadership in this development," Haavisto added.
