The word "sustainable" means that forests were not sustained so that soybean plantations could be built.
The food energy that many people of the world could use to get through the night tonight, is being burned so that rich people will not have to burn coal or build nuclear power plants. The sun has taught us that sustainable energy is nuclear energy, but it is too dilute for inexpensive use for many applications. Unlike coal, which can stay around forever, Uranium 235 has mostly disappeared from the earth and Uranium 238 and Thorium 232 will also go away by themselves, so they should be used. With Rubbia Reactors, all can be used, and at present rates will last for millions of years. And fifty years later, fusion power plants will finally be operating.

If Holland has enough land to produce all of the fuel needed for KLM and Dutch automobiles as well, then KLM can talk about sustainable. KLM should build nuclear reactors in Holland to produce fuel from water and CO2. They can start by producing jet fuel from natural gas and heating homes with heat-pumps operated from nuclear electricity. In many cases, especially bio-ethanol, it releases less CO2 to just use additional fossil fuels to the amount used to produce ethanol and have forests replace the corn on the land to take up CO2. No European country that does not supply, through it own agriculture, all the calories needed by its populace can logically justify the use of biofuels. Ethanol is itself a food. Most, if not all, bio-oils are food or can be made into food. Crude oil itself can be made into food; just look up Pruteen; Methanol can be made from coal or oil or wood. ..HG..

Henry,
I agree completely.
But this is a demonstration of an AIRPLANE, not a GTL-plant.
It's important they prove that an airplane can be operated on synthetic liquid fuel.
Whether the initial methane is produced from biomass or from nuclear H2 is of secondary importance here.
The alternative fuel industry is a good incentive to produce very large amounts of 'alternative' biomass, that will probably turn-out to be the next green revolution.
Algae produce 50ton/hectare biomass, of which 25 ton is fuel and 25 ton is protein-rich 'waste'. That 'waste can be fermented to methane or can be used as (animal)food
Heterotrophic algae transform any 'waste'-biomass and/or H2 in 50%fuel and 50% protein-rich food.
Extremely high amounts of food-biomass can be grown by organisms fed with (nuclear) H2 and CO2 (and some minerals found in seawater).
Because of the controversy around 'engineered' food-production, the incentive for very-large-scale alternative food production is low. Thanks to the alternative fuel requirements, this 'by-product' will change the world and food-production much more than the green revolution of the 20th century.
Given the amount of calories a person needs as energy (for electricity, transportation, industry, heating) compared to the amount of calories he needs to eat : if only 5% of the 'alternative fuel' production is eaten and 95% if burned, we will need no other agriculture anymore.
A person needs around 15 MJ/day of calories. (=400ml of gasoline)
A (nuclear) powerplant of 1GW produces 1000MJ/second or 86400000 MJ/day.
If that energy can be transformed to food (which is beïng developed now thanks to the need for alternative fuel), it's enough to feed 5.7 million people.
We will certainly produce huge amounts of renewable/nuclear H2 in the near-future anyway. If a small percentage of that H2 is transformed to food, many problems will be solved. It will certainly happen long before our natural-gas reserves are exhausted.

So, any incentive that could hasten development of large-scale biomass-transformation (and industrial biomass-creation) is a good-one.

Despite everything, people spend more money on food than on energy. If 'big oil' of today will realise they can become 'big food' of tomorrow, they will invest what's needed. The oil-refineries of today may become the food-factories of tomorrow (with a negative carbon-foodprint if the legislation is right).

With the price of petrol in the uk, I can aussure you that there are many people that spend more money on fuel than food over here, and are forced to spend less on food, going more for the junk and not healthy options every time the government decides to raise taxes to "continue sending the right environmental signals" (or in other words fill the financial black hole it has created bailing the banks out).

The government, realising that many of use are eating too much fat etc etc, then has the nerve to tell us (nanny rather) how to eat properly. But how can we when we can't afford it, not because of biofuels but other expenses, especially getting to work?