“It is time to act quickly and in a targeted manner in order to ensure the much needed decarbonisation of the European transport sector”. To say it is Piero Cavigliasso, director public affairs Biochemtex (Mossi Ghisolfi Group) and president of the Leaders of Sustainable Biofuels, an European group which brings together big companies such as Clariant, UPM, British Airways and Dong Energy
“Our companies – Cavigliasso writes in an note – re-confirm the willingness to further deploy and supply the most innovative technologies to produce advanced biofuels from currently unused, underutilized or otherwise wasted raw materials in order to contribute to the EU objectives outlined in the strategy (European Strategy for Low Emission Mobility, published by the European Commission last 20 July, editor’s note).”
The South African Airways Group (SAA) last Friday operated Africa’s first sustainable biofuel flights. The flights on Boeing 737-800s between Johannesburg and Cape Town made history as the first sustainable biofuel flights to have taken place on the African continent. They used home-grown feedstock from the Marble Hall area in the Limpopo region of South Africa as part of Project Solaris, a biofuels project named after the energy tobacco plant used (a technology made in Italy). The nicotine-free, hybridised tobacco plant lends itself to the production of biofuel as the Solaris plant produces small leaves and prodigious flowers and seeds that are crushed to extract a vegetable crude oil. The Solaris plant is ideally suited for this purpose as the remaining seedcake is used as a high protein animal feed supplement that also contributes to food security.
IL BIOECONOMISTA 