Spiegel Online interviewed a Boeing executive who says Algae Could ‘Supply Entire World with Aviation Fuel’

SPIEGEL ONLINE: One of the major points of concern is land use. Take, for example, jatropha, one possible source of biofuels. How many square kilometres of that plant would actually be necessary to fuel a flight over the Atlantic Ocean?

Glover: Good question, I never figured it out that way. We really do not expect that all of the world’s flights will be fuelled by jatropha plants exclusively.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Than let us talk about algae. How big do these cultures need to be?

Glover: The optimists say, to supply the entire world with aviation fuel, you would perhaps need an area of the size of Belgium. We still need quite a bit of research and development work to really determine whether that is possible. So far, we are very pleasantly surprised by the innovation and the progress.

That is about 12,000 square miles (31,000 sq km) or about the size of the US state of Maryland, which seems like a tiny space in order to fuel all air transportation. I wonder how much total space is dedicated to coal and oil. The Sahara Desert is 8.6 million sq km so there is plenty of room available for such a scheme in a place no one will notice, another nice thing about biofuel compared with oil and coal. This also reminds me of the argument that solar panels in only 0.3 percent of the desert could meet all of Europe’s energy needs.