Planes, Trains, Citroëns + French Fries: Air France to Fuel Planes with Cooking Oil

Flickr/ldrose

If you needed another reason to book an Air France flight to Paris, you can now do so in the name of environmentalism. Well, at least if you ignore the carbon footprint part. According to Mother Nature Network, Air France-KLM has announced that this fall it will start fueling planes with a blend of cooking oil and kerosene. The first flights to use the alternative fuel will run between Paris and Amsterdam. Your pot brownie and biofuel joke here ______.

The fuel is produced by Dynamic Fuels, which refines used cooking oil to meet the same specifications as more traditional kerosene. KLM successfully tested a 50-50 mix of the fuel in November of 2009 on a Boeing 747. One major incentive for the conversion is that planes do not need to be modified to use the biofuel. Another, of course, is that the International Air Transport Association four years ago set a target of eliminating carbon dioxide emissions from air travel by 2050. Of course they did.