On July 15 2016, a South African Airlines airplane blew smoke-rings into the sky with a revolutionary engine powered by the world’s leading cause of preventable death: tobacco. This innovative, unconventional use of the deadly plant highlights its untapped potential as a resource for sustainability, providing a fresh perspective to an age-old global and environmental health problem.
With tobacco being the serial killer of more than 8 million people a year and annual producer of 84 megatons of CO2 emissions, it’s unfortunate that thousands of tobacco farmers also depend on this plant as a source of income and livelihood. 90 percent of tobacco is grown in lower and middle income countries, specifically in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific region, where four in five smokers reside. While crop diversification in the world’s top tobacco producers has the potential to lower smoking rates in low-income communities, the reluctance to switch crops stems from two central reasons: tobacco always has a readily available global market, and the land it is planted on is typically unsuitable for the growth of other plants.
Addressing the issues tobacco brings does not have to be a choice between prioritizing environmental and global health conservation or farmers’ livelihoods, but rather achieving the balance of needs between the two. Researchers have discovered methods to repurpose the age-old cash crop into both an ethical source of income and a viable option for biofuel. Advancements in genetic engineering have taken advantage of tobacco’s ability to produce large amounts of sugar and oil. Using genetic modification, the hybrid plant can produce 20 times more oil than its smoking counterpart. Solaris, for example, is a nicotine-free hybrid of tobacco cultivated in South Africa that yields a large quantity of especially oily seeds which can be processed into biofuel. Researchers have also noted that energy tobacco is more efficient than traditional biofuel crops, with one acre of the plant having the potential to produce three times the ethanol and biodiesel when compared to corn and soy.
In 2014, Boeing and South African Airways, along with SkyNRG and Sunchem, launched Project Solaris in an aim to lay the basis for South Africa to become a regional chain supplier of sustainable tobacco biofuel. A localized supply chain could have transformative power in terms of job creation and rural socio-economic development, enhancing the economy of South Africa without encouraging smoking. The project has since planted 123 acres of Solaris in South Africa’s Limpopo province.
Farmers in the U.S. have also experimented with low-nicotine varieties of the plant. Because the demand for tobacco farming across the US has declined significantly over the past four decades, large plots of land in historical tobacco regions have been left unused while also being unfit to grow other crops. Instead of growing low-value crops like hay on these lands, farmers could earn more revenue per acre growing energy tobacco. For existing tobacco farmers, the transition from growing smoking tobacco to energy tobacco would be relatively simple, requiring the same skills and equipment. Unlike smoking tobacco, energy tobacco is grown in close clusters that are mechanically harvested, meaning it takes less labor to produce a crop.
Researchers have found that the many-faced plant also has several other distinct advantages when compared to other common sources of biofuel. While the use of food crops—such as corn and soy—to make biofuel has the potential to cause a spike in food prices and hurt global food security, tobacco doesn’t compete with the national food supply. Additionally, turning over the soil of previously uncultivated land to make room for converting traditional food crops to biofuel sources could cause cause considerable harm, displacing wildlife while releasing significant amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But by repurposing the 10 million acres of already-existing tobacco farmland—much of which is now unused—into tobacco biofuel production sites, farmers can create a sustainable biofuel that exists without a contradictory harm to the environment.
However, the production of tobacco biofuel may be slow to ramp up. Tobacco biofuel is far more expensive to produce than traditional jet fuel, primarily because it currently lacks large-scale operations. This does not undermine the importance of exploring and investing in the plant as a clean energy source. At its current trajectory, aviation will account for 22 percent of total global carbon emissions by 2050, a stark reminder of the need for innovation in renewable energy solutions. The glow-up of “the world’s leading cause of preventable death” is an optimistic reminder that even the most harmful substances can be repurposed for the better. While smoking may be banned on aircrafts, sustainable tobacco biofuel might just be sending them into the sky someday, offering a cleaner, greener path for flight.
