Set as a long term strategy years ago, it is know a clamour in the society and a very important goal to achieve in the upcoming years. From objective to reality, IATA´s goal it´s to achieve in 2050, flights without carbon emissions.
Biofuels are a kind of fuel produced from biomass to liquid. They can also contain vegetable oils.
To fully understand the current situation we have to go back to 2008, when the first commercial flight with alternative fuel processed by a synthetic gas took place. It was a Filton-Toulouse flight in a A380, using a gas synthetic liquid called GTL (Gas to Liquids) which has similar emissions compared to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG).
Shortly after that flight, a London-Amsterdam flight with a Boeing 747 from Virgin Atlantic, used one of its four engines with biofuel. The reason beneath that fact was to prevent any accident in case the engine had any problem and that biofuels are more likely to freeze at great heights.
One remarkable project from ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) that is looking for sostenibility is the Project ITAKA (Initiative Towards sustainable Kerosene for Aviation) which "intends to support the development of aviation biofuels in Europe, in an economically, socially and environmentally sustainable manner".
It is the first project in Europe with the goal to stablish a solid and lasting relationship between supply and demand in a sustainable manner. This huge effort is also possible to it´s partners: Airbus Group, Lufthansa, Senasa, SAS, Embraer, KLM, etc.
Virgin Australia is currently the airline who has taken more seriously the use of lower emissions fuel. In 2019, the airline flew one million kilometres with Gevo´s (Advanced Biofuels and Low-Carbon Chemicals company) low-carbon fuel. The intention of the company is to "establish a local low-carbon fuel industry that will have positive environmental, social and economic impacts".
There is a debate whether the change of fuel types would mean serious modifications to the aircraft manufacturers and the rest of the industry and that the developments would require a long transition to be implemented worldwide.
Reality is that the transition would be easier (not easy) to be implemented in existing aircrafts. No big modifications would be required because the "new fuels" that are starting to be used are similar in lubricity and density to the current ones. It is true that the new fuel generations are more expensive to produce and that is one of the main issues it´s facing.
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