A little after 7pm ET tonight, a Virgin Atlantic 747 will take off from Orlando, Florida, bound for London’s Gatwick airport. This flight will be the first to use a blend of jet fuel and fuel made from industrial waste gas from a steel mill in China. This waste-gas fuel will displace some of the petroleum-based jet fuel that usually fills up a commercial jet’s tanks.
The company that makes the alternative fuel blend, LanzaTech, says third-party estimates show its fuels reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by more than 70 percent compared to burning the same amount of jet fuel.