The Promise of Kelp-Powered Flight

Seaweed cultivation is experiencing a resurgence globally, with countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, and India adopting it as a source of livelihood and nutrition, as well as a fast-growing source of food production with manifold potential uses in agriculture. In addition to its use as food, restoring degraded natural kelp forests could help to restore ecosystems and reduce ocean acidification. However, could seaweed also power the aviation industry?

According to Catriona Macleod, deputy head of the Fisheries and Aquaculture Centre at the University of Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies in Australia, seaweed is the “Swiss army knife” of tools to tackle planetary challenges. One such challenge is the need for a sustainable source of aviation fuel. Currently, fossil fuels power the vast majority of flights, contributing nearly 2.5% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, with an additional 3.5% of emissions generated by non-CO2 sources. Renewable alternatives such as biofuels from crops on land have their own sustainability issues, including large land and water usage and harm to biodiversity. Seaweed, on the other hand, requires fewer resources to grow and has more than a decade of experiments as a fuel behind it.

Despite the potential of seaweed as a fuel source, it is not a miracle crop. The quantities of seaweed required to fuel long-distance transport would be substantial, and excessive use of it could result in a new set of problems, potentially even leading to carbon emissions. Scaling up seaweed aquaculture is also a significant challenge, as noted by Macleod.

In the third episode of Future Planet’s video series New Directions, we explore the potential of seaweed as a fuel source for the aviation industry.