Recently in Aerospace manufacturers Category

Today and tomorrow the participants in Europe's Green Regional Aircraft (GRA) programme are in Caserta, Italy to get the technical activity underway. Briefly, GRA is one of the six strands of the all-important Clean Sky research programme. That in turn is the pan-European research effort aimed at helping industry achieve the continent's environmental targets in aviation. GRA accounts for €174 million of Clean Sky's €1.6 billion over seven years.

Well I suppose the headline above is pretty well guaranteed to spark the critics into action, but the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Users Group launched by Boeing, Honeywell, a group of ten airlines, and two environmental groups has had a remarkably neutral reception. In the tinderbox of the aviation environmental debate that's quite a success.

Another noteworthy feature of this project is that it was kept quiet until launch - also quite a feat in the leaky aviation world. The two points may not be unconnected. Obviously the new group now has to deliver, but in the short term it's difficult to argue with its aims, and opponents may just be drawing breath.

Meanwhile, I've scoured the blogosphere and just about nobody has a rude word to say about it - for now. This blog is from Liz Barratt-Brown at the Natural Resources Defense Counsel (NRDC) which is one of the partners in the group - but it's an interesting viewpoint all the same.

British Airways and Rolls-Royce have finally gone public on a programme to investigate alternative fuels that has been much rumoured for the last few months. This one's important - Rolls-Royce in particular has been scathing of any activity related to non-sustainable biofuels.

Last week I reported this on our premium news service Air Transport Intelligence: Director engineering and technology, Colin Smith, told a pre-Farnborough airshow briefing today: "We are not willing to work on biofuels that are not sustainable. That has been unpopular sometimes - we refused to do one demonstration because of that.

"We need to create a biofuel from biomass that does not compete with foodstuffs. It is just barking mad to compete with foodstuffs."

He adds that the company will also only work on projects aimed at yielding a "drop-in" fuel that could be used as a direct replacement in existing engines. "And they also must not absorb water," he adds.

Smith says: "Most of the current biofuels are just plain daft from an aerospace point of view. They only work down to about -5ºC."

He notes that kerosene has numerous desirable properties and is not easy to replace, but says: "In a few more years you will be able to manipulate any biomass for this purpose. We will work on any biofuel if it is sustainable."

The full text of the BA/RR announcement is below.

I drew attention a few weeks ago to a guest article in liberal UK newspaper The Guardian by Airbus CEO Tom Enders, noting his reputation for reasoned debate. Here in Geneva he was uncharacteristically tetchy, using a fair chunk of his presentation to express exasperation with at least some of aviation's green critics.