Currently, jet fuel is made from fossil fuels and contributes about 2% of carbon pollution into the atmosphere. Converting to biofuels would have a significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions. Most research into biofuels has centered around soybeans and canola oil, both food crops that require fertilizer, tilling, herbicides, harvesting, and processing. All of this effort drives up the cost of production. What if instead, we could use a weed plant for creating biofuels; Enter pennycress, also known as stinkweed.
Ajay Shah at Ohio State University has been investigating stinkweed, a common farm weed, to determine it's potential as a source of biofuels. Pennycress has simpler growth requirements than food crops, requiring fewer herbicides and no tilling before planting. It is also a winter crop, meaning it will grow outside the typical corn growing season. The crop can even be planted amongst the corn crop before harvesting the corn and will be itself harvested before planting the next food crop. This increases the productivity of the land and does nothing to decrease food production. Pennycress can be processed in a manner similar to soybeans and canola to produce jet fuel. The authors estimate that using pennycress could reduce the cost of producing jet fuel by 50%.