Virgin biofuel flight race with Air NZ

British billionaire Sir Richard Branson says his Virgin Group hopes to produce clean biofuels in a few years and early next year will test a jet plane on renewable fuel.

Air New Zealand has said it plans to test a flight on a combination fuel of biofuel and kerosene late next year, but Virgin is trying to beat it by testing biofuels first.

Virgin hoped to provide clean fuel for buses, trains and cars within three or four years, Sir Richard told a meeting in Boston yesterday.

In the meantime, it would conduct a test jet flight on renewable fuels. "Early next year we will fly one of our 747s without passengers with one of the fuels that we have developed."

Virgin is developing biofuels for aircraft in conjunction with Boeing and engine-maker GE Aviation, a unit of General Electric. Previously, Sir Richard had said the company would test the fuel sometime next year and that some people had said it would be late in the year.

Sir Richard pledged last year to spend all the profit over the next 10 years from his 51 per cent stake in Virgin's airline and rail businesses on fighting global warming.

He also created Virgin Fuels, which is investing US$400 million (NZ$529 million) over three years in renewable energy initiatives, as part of the pledge.

Biofuels, at this point mostly ethanol and biodiesel, have had explosive growth this year amid record oil prices and concern about global warming. They are believed to emit less greenhouse gas because they are made from plants such as corn and soybeans that absorb carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas, when they grow.

Cutting emissions of heat- trapping gases from transport sources is more difficult than cutting them from stationary sources such as power plants. Power stations can switch from coal, the heaviest greenhouse gas emitter, to cleaner burning natural gas.

Sir Richard said that jets might have problems using ethanol, the most common biofuel, which is made mainly from corn in the United States and sugar cane in Brazil. He said ethanol froze at 4600 metres and that butanol, a fuel similar to petrol that can be made from biomass, might be a better alternative. It was also less corrosive than ethanol.

Virgin Fuels has invested in a small number of US ethanol projects.

It hoped eventually to produce branded biofuels, the company's managing partner said earlier this year.

Separately, Sir Richard said Virgin would name one of its Galactic craft – planned for use in space tourism – after his friend Steve Fossett, the millionaire American adventurer who disappeared while flying a small plane over the Nevada desert early last month.

Test flights of the Galactic craft begin next year and passenger service is expected to begin in 2009.

- Reuters