Biofuel flight to Rio

Today, 19 June, KLM made its first-ever transatlantic KLM flight fuelled partly by sustainable biofuels. The destination? The Rio+20 conference in Rio de Janeiro, where governments and commercial partners meet to make new agreements in the area of sustainability. This is the longest distance any aircraft has flown on biofuels. A world première that was made possible by the partnership between KLM, SkyNRG, the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment and the World Wide Fund for Nature The Netherlands.

As a leading airline company KLM is committed to the development of biokerosene together with the WWF-NL and SKyNRG . The Netherlands is represented at the Rio+20 conference by Minister Atsma, who is travelling to Rio on this flight. KLM’s aims at using 1% biofuels for all its flights by 2015. The biofuel for this flight is made from used cooking oil and is being mixed in the aircraft's tanks. It is the way for airlines to contribute to the reduction of CO2 emissions at the moment.

What benefits does the biofuelled flight provide?

Based on 65% to 80% less emissions compared to a flight that uses 100% kerosene, we saved around 43 tonnes of CO2 emissions during the flight from Amsterdam to Rio de Janeiro. The introduction of sustainable biofuels is therefore one of the objectives that KLM wants to achieve together with its partners. In 2011 KLM entered into the Green Deal with the Dutch government to further promote the use of sustainable biofuels for the airline industry.