Just as bologna sandwiches don’t taste nearly as good when hamburger meat sells for 99 cents a pound, airlines are losing their taste for biofuels now that they can buy a gallon of conventional jet fuel for less than a buck.
Over the past 15 years there have been waves of interest in biofuels as industry leaders grew concerned about oil prices, global terrorism, economic weakness, environmental issues, sustainability and other big picture issues. Additionally, airlines – which always are sensitive to the rising and falling of public and political sentiments – have sought to position themselves as environmentally-concerned corporate citizens eager to make the jump to burning greener, cleaner biofuels rather than nasty-old carbon fuels.
For the most part, they successfully have nurtured that perception among the public even though in reality they have done little more than play around the edges of biofuel experimentation.