Around 45,000 planes fly across the US daily, carrying some 1.7 million passengers, making it the single largest contributor to aviation carbon dioxide emissions globally and responsible for more than a quarter of all emissions from flying.
The new study, led by a team of Arizona State University researchers, found that planting the grass miscanthus on 23.2 million hectares of existing marginal agricultural lands across the US – land that often lays fallow or is poor in soil quality – would provide enough biomass feedstock to meet the liquid fuel demands of the country’s aviation sector fully from biofuels.
“We demonstrate that it is within reach for the United States to decarbonise the fuel used by commercial aviation, without having to wait for electrification of aircraft propulsion,” said Nazli Uludere Aragon, co-corresponding author on the study.
“If we are serious about getting to net zero greenhouse gas emissions, we need to deal with emissions...