Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; According to Cambridge Professor of Engineering Julian Allwood, zero carbon aviation is not going to happen in the foreseeable future.
The only way to hit net zero by 2050 is to stop flying
Julian Allwood
Dreaming of electric planes and planting trees will not save our planet
The writer is professor of engineering and the environment at Cambridge university
The UK aviation industry this week promised to bring its net carbon emissions down to zero by 2050 while growing by 70 per cent, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson boldly predicted that “viable electric planes” would be available in just a few years.
But past experience with innovation in aviation suggests that such ambitious targets are unrealistic and distracting. The only way the UK can get to net zero emission aviation by 2050 is by having a substantial period of no aviation at all. Let’s stop placing impossible hopes on breakthrough technologies, and try to hit emissions targets with today’s technologies. Our recent report “Absolute Zero” draws on work at six British universities to explain how.
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So the commitment to net zero aviation by 2050 is really a commitment to zero aviation. Rather than hope new technology will magically rescue us, we should stop planning to increase fossil-fuel flights and commit to halving them within 10 years with an eye toward phasing them out entirely by 2050.
Taxing aircraft fuel at the level of the UK’s current road fuel tax would be a useful first step: I estimate that it would make flights up to four times more expensive.
Climate policy announcements so far have failed to account for the limited rate at which new technologies can reach significant scale. Fifty years after the Danes began developing wind turbines, they contribute just 2 per cent of world primary energy. Regardless of prices or incentives, new energy generation, transport and industrial processes require public consultation on regulations, land use, funding, environmental impacts and more. This all slows down their adoption.
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Read more (paywalled): https://www.ft.com/content/e00819ba-4814-11ea-aee2-9ddbdc86190d
Given how much Brits love their low cost airlines and cheap holiday flights to Mallorca, punitive taxes on aircraft fuel and an ultimate plan to destroy the industry will be a tough sell.
Same thing applies to all ocean-going, large cargo marine-transportation ships and passenger cruise ships as well.
Can’t cover them with enough solar PV cells or windmills needed to directly power the necessary (electrical) engines for any realistic transit times.
Can’t load them up with batteries sufficient to provide required horsepower over typical 3-5 days transit times.
Can’t recharge them mid-ocean. Can’t swap-out batteries mid-ocean.
Can’t provide an extension cord long enough (or in conductor diameters needed to minimize (I^2)/R losses) so they could operate using mainland grid electricity ;-))
Going beyond the points in the above article, probably cannot even consider nuclear reactor power for COMMERCIAL ocean transportation, due to the tight and extensive protections needed against theft of radioactive materials and against terrorist attack . . . things that are only achieved with small nuclear reactors as used by MILITARY ocean-going vessels.
Solved Problem. Liverpool — San Francisco via Cape Horn on the Davy Crockett 90 days. You weren’t in a rush were you?
Exactly!
A three-masted clipper ship (the fastest ocean-transiting, sailing cargo/passenger ship design of its era) had a top speed of about 250 miles/day, assuming continuous usable winds, and could carry up to 4,000 tons of “cargo”. —source: https://www.marineinsight.com/maritime-history/what-is-a-clipper-ship-2/
In comparison, most of today’s fossil fuel-powered, ocean-going containerships have a design speed of about 660 miles/day (around 24 knots). The cargo deadweight of these ships ranging from 9,000 to 25,000 tons, or 2 to 6 times that of the sailing clippers of the past.
And most of today’s fossil-fuel-powered, ocean-going passenger cruise ships have an average speed of about 550 miles/day (20 knots), with maximum speeds reaching about 830 miles/day (30 knots). In the larger sizes of this category of ocean vessels, the “cargo” deadweight—accounting for 5,000 or more passengers and a crew of up to 2,000, plus food and luggage, approaches that of the heaviest cargo ships, around 25,000 tons.
The obvious solution is to bring back the steam engine, powered with renewable wood pellets.
Or perhaps we should go even farther back and build giant sails to capture all that renewable wind power.
Reductio ad absurdum:
How much longer must we endure calls for half measure like Zero Aviation? How dare you!? The Earth is dying, people. You say net zero emissions by 2050; I say you do not understand the problem. I say you are killing our children and their future. CO2 has been declared a pollutant by the EPA, but not a “criteria pollutant”. The effects of global warming are being felt across this nation and the world, now. The increasingly bizarre, severe weather is absolutely connected to a warming climate. This inaction is outrageous.
The Center for Biological Diversity has said: “To achieve the necessary emission reductions, the Center is urging the Obama administration to declare carbon dioxide a “criteria pollutant” under the Clean Air Act and set a national pollution cap no greater than 350 parts per million (ppm), the level scientists and countries agreed not to exceed because it will cause catastrophic global warming.”
Even this is not enough. Stop the pussy footing! Today I am calling for a worldwide atmospheric CO2 pollution cap of Zero. Zip. Nada. We can pull the filthy stuff directly out of the air and bury it underground in saline aquifers, a process known as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). We have the technology. We may never get to 0 ppm, but surely 50 ppm or at least 100 ppm is achievable.
There will be nay sayers. Skeptics never rest. Deniers will be the end of us. Their talking points have been a constant drum beat. “You will kill all plant life”, they will say. Like they know anything or care about the Earth and kids. We do not have the time and energy to debunk each of their pathetic claims. They are pure evil. While it pains me to say it, it may be necessary to put more than a few up against the wall, if you take my meaning.
Full disclosure: They say I have too much time on my hands.
Brave be the politician who goes the full Greta and bans air travel for the masses.
For a start how about banning attendance at the COP 26 Gorbals Warming Summit to any delegate who arrives by air? The British press hates hypocrisy.
A zero carbon dioxide economy would really disrupt travel. Not only flying but driving as well. We would
be back to gravel roads as there would be no tar or cement for new roads or road repairs.
“The only way to hit net zero [carbon] by 2050 is to stop flying”
No, no, no
Also forget about smartphones, cars, bananas, mangoes, strawberries in winter, cheap toys from China, holidays in Turkey or Bahamas, meat from Argentina, …
Except the richest 3% still will have it all, of course.
Wish I could add a /sarc tag here.
From the boxed except from Julian Allwood given in the above article: “Regardless of prices or incentives, new energy generation, transport and industrial processes require . . .”
Really? I can guarantee you that any “new energy generation” technology that would offer utility-scale electricity at a LCOE rate ($/kWh or equivalent) that was, say, 10% the cost of next least-expensive technology (without incentives in either case) would be an instant hit and would predominate world energy generation within 5 years, and NOTHING would stand in the way of that happening!
But how will the Greens get around to “”Save the Planet “”
MJE VK5ELL
What is wrong with these so called intellectuals?
They work in their universities in their Ivory Towers and have lost the way to think rationally
( if they ever could )
The ONLY way to reduce carbon emissions in a meaningful way without destroying the worlds economy is to use nuclear power and plenty of it .
There is no other solution and any professor suggesting otherwise has not got the intellect to work that out for them selves .
The general population of all developed countries are not going to give up their standard of living and agree to let the people who think they are the elite to carry on their exclusive life styles .
The general population of all democratic first world countries will not allow their politicians and academics
to destroy their standard of living in a vain quest of restricting the emission of a minor trace gas.
I was born in the 1940s and brought up without electricity and I would guess that these people could never imagine living like that .
Graham
A commercial electric plane would be all batteries and a half dozen passengers and land with the same weight as it took off. Long flights would require recharging or battery changes. You would be better off training swans to pull gliders.
Maybe they’ll be flying these things:
When will the Chinese and Indians and Americans stop flying their airplanes?
Or will the UK be the only place where airplanes are banned?
A futile gesture, it is. The people proposing these things still haven’t realized that they are demanding the impossible. And are doing so to solve a CO2 problem that doesn’t exist.
All of this pondering about how a country would operate with zero carbon is moot.
The country that does not follow the zero carbon track will be coming over the border with fossil-fueled war machines and place all of the inhabitants into servitude.
By 2050, Kim Jong Still-Ill-but-getting-Better will be able to threaten every country foolish enough to not have the wherewithal to fight back
Carbon free fighter jets…….. Tee hee 😂😂😂
These people are insane.
Why, oh why, are these idiots against foodstuff production?
Are they stupid or evil?
Either way, they get paid to bullshit with phony gravitas. It won’t be long now …….
The good thing about airways is that I have so far never seen construction or maintenance works up there.
We need no bridges, tunnels, switches. At en-route altitudes you can’t hear nor readily see us fro ground. Unlike trains we don’t devalue thousands of miles of roadside real-estate and upon administrative agreement, new ways are open within minutes.
We don’t cut thru animal habitats, hit cows or trailer-trucks.
Statistically the safest transport, even safer than elevators.
Then check the numbers of what goes above your head, day and night. Amazing throughput capacity, isn’t it ?
So my advice Mr.Professor is to concentrate your tenure maintenance efforts on something more sensical, such as the impact of humanity over Jupiter climate.
Or reorient your career to a field with fewer intellectual requirements.
Right after their frequent flyer miles run out from global conferences with paid travel.
Heathrow Airport has 2 runways each about 2 miles long. It used to have 6 and then 3. You can fly to just about anywhere on the planet and for that an airliner will only use 1 of the runways. So for any journey to places like Paris or Moscow or New York or Tokyo only 2 miles of surface is required at the start and another 2 miles of surface at the end regardless of distance. Flying is the one transport where there is minimal surface disruption. That will go over the heads of most environmentalists (pun intended) as one bright spark complained that aviation never pays any road tax.
No road tax, it is true. But taxes are typically 30% of economy flights, and up to (and sometimes more than) 50% of business class flights.
Not as much as car & truck fuel tax in most developed countries, I’ll admit, but more than people realise.
Zig Zag
Quite. My parents generation appeared to have a better sense of general knowledge than current generations and it’s not getting better. A few years back I took issue with an Independent newspaper journalist, John Rentoul, who was ranting about aviation. This is part of what he said:
“…air travel is the most energy- hungry thing most people can do ….. You can drive a car up and down the length of the UK for years…… before you burn up as much petrol as your share of a single plane trip”.
You can guess how successful my efforts at correcting this ignorance was. Zero.
Professor of Engineering and the Environment. Really? He’s not very good at maths then. Aviation accounts for about 2/3% of world oil consumption. So stopping aviation will bring about net zero?
James
Things have improved a bit beyond the vast majority living just above subsistence. Please visit Gapminder and see some of the data they have and that the general trajectory of the world’s population is towards better year on year: https://www.gapminder.org/ignorance/
The vast majority are above subsistence and that has nearly all been achieved with the use of fossil fuels.
Well, if everyone were to stop flying there would be no need for aircraft. That means every Airbus, Boeing, Embraer, etc. factory would be boarded-up. All the workers, engineers, food services, maintenance people, etc. would be sent home forever. All airports would be similarly locked-up. No need for pilots or air-traffic controllers either.
Perhaps these crackpot professors will oversee the conversion of those empty buildings into homeless shelters for the newly unemployed.
Well, the prof might want to ground the planes, but perhaps someone grounded in reality should explain a basic fact: a democratic or representative republic will never accept the grounding of planes.
While people might consider all the jobs directly linked to air travel (companies, pilots, attendants, mechanics, etc), does anybody consider all the other jobs affected? What about the travel industry – hotels, car rentals, restaurants? Then there are the destinations. How much would major resort areas lose – Orlando, Vegas, NYC, London, Paris, island get-aways? Then there are the ‘little guys’ – Uber drivers, taxi drivers, tour guides, souvenir shopkeepers. And how much would Disney, Universal Studios, Vegas casinos, and on and on, spend to defeat such an effort, to keep the visitors coming? And don’t forget, governments at all levels reap billions in taxes on all this. Besides destinstion cities like Orlando, NYC, and Vegas, expect hub cities like Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta, Charlotte, and numerous others to fight such a proposal tooth and toenail.
I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of people are, or know someone, dependent in some way on air travel. If you want to ground airlines, you must first take over government and cancel all elections. Let’s see them try it.
” a democratic or representative republic will never accept the grounding of planes.”
Well, in nominally democratic (but mostly socialist) South Africa, its national airline SAA is dead broke and in the hands of rescue planners. It’s an attempt to stop the closure of the airline, which LOSES millions of (foreign currency) dollars every day. Since the majority of the populace are poor and simply don’t fly, the general consensus is to SHUT THE DAMN THING DOWN! But, as proved above, the government as owner doesn’t want to do this, and are willing to pour a continuous stream of taxpayers’ money into the airline.
Maybe the fact that National and Provincial MPs (to say nothing of ministers and deputy ministers) fly for free has something to do with it?
This will be the next Marxist Famine. Made by centrist extremists. Yes a supposed paradox.
The so called political center is now full of radical people.
Time we required university sabbaticals to be one year in three and spent in the real world they pontificate about, not at another university polishing up the letters after their name. We should require our governments make it a condition of university funding. Then all the woke idiots could find out that no one cares out in the real world, that people are too busy looking after their families and making a living and that their lovely theories are utterly irrelevant to real life. Cambridge and Oxford have given a great deal to the world, now they are living in the alternative universe of Phillip Pullman. At some point in the future, they may even be held accountable for the disaster they have inflected on us by the people’s commissars they are so keen to inflict upon us, but not of course themselves. .
Yeahbut…
Please stop mickey mann coming down under for his taxpayer-funded sabbatical next time. We have enough Climate Scientologists here already.
oh pleeease stop him,
Id love to see Bransons face on reading this
mr offsets plans many many more planes
Interestingly, there was recently a presentation given to the GWPF by professor Gautum Kalghati on electrification of UK transport. On the electrification of aviation he had this to say.
“A A320 airbus Neo can carry 266 Mw Hours of fuel, and a battery that contained this amount of energy would weigh 1940 tons – that’s 19 times the MAUW of the aircraft and at 1 Mw, would take 11 days to charge.”
I give the link to the Youtube here: https://youtu.be/NNRk4iGreSw
In that case just take the wings off and lay down rail lines. That’s not difficult as they just have to cut vast swathes through whatever forest, hill or town that is in the way and then enough steel, concrete and balast to cover the entire length of wherever it has to go.
You forgot to mention the overhead electrified trolly lines and periodic electric power stations (every 100 miles or so, powered by solar or wind or hydro or nuclear) because, of course, diesel as currently used to power 99+% of railroad freight in the US is a carbon-containing fuel and must be eliminated.
You are already behind!
The electric trolley lines are already installed on the Autobahn between Frankfurt and Darmstadt.
I’ve never seen them in use, but if I did, I would wonder about the craziness involved in generating stable German grid electricity at night with lots of coal (cos they closed their NPPs), and then carting the energy over 100s of kms to be used on the German autobahn to power who knows in an inevitable traffic jam by having only ONE LANE available for it.
Surely somebody must understand Diesel fuel is the densest most compact fuel source for commercial vehicles, which is why buses, lorries and most other heavy vans use it?
Germans never were the most logical people but..why all this?
virtue signalling
There will never be net zero C02 on the planet. How stupid does one have to be to even propose such idiocy? I guess being a professor makes one dumb enough.
I’m not sure why all the negative comments–for once they are telling the truth. You can’t get to zero carbon with out ending the burning of all fossil fuels. That the idea of doing so is nuts doesn’t change the fact that it is the only way.
Off topic–why didn’t the ice core evidence that temperature change precedes CO2 change end this global warming nonsense? If the ice core data is true, and no one has said otherwise, then it follows that it doesn’t matter how much fossil fuel we burn. Our burning fossil fuels doesn’t change the physics that the ice core data demonstrates. Why are there any lukewarmers? The ice core data should have ended the discussion.