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“The Jet Zero Strategy is designed to future-proof aviation so passengers can look forward to guilt-free travel.”
That’s the aim of Grant Shapps and the Department for Transport’s new plan, announced this week, to deliver emission-free air travel by 2050. It sounds great for travellers and it’s got a catchy name, but is it too good to be true?
Research by a Cambridge University led group, Aviation Impact Accelerator (AIA), shared with Sky News, shows the scale of the challenge that the government and the global air-travel industry is facing.
Right now, we burn 10 tonnes of jet fuel every second – that’s an Olympic swimming pool every three minutes. To replace this with sustainable aviation fuel would require the current production to be increased by over 1,000 times.
We’ll get to the other obstacles – land-use, electricity-use, new planes and the money, later on.
The plan
There are six key objectives that are meant to ensure that the government’s ambitious 2050 goal is met. There are two that we’re going to look at in more detail, but click on the others for a brief overview of what they entail.
- Improving the efficiency of planes
- Encouraging customers to make green choices
- Capturing and offsetting carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions
- Dealing with other non-CO2 warming effects of flying
- Using more sustainable fuels
- Zero emission flight
Points 5 and 6 are the ones we’re going to look at in more detail, they involve creating either new fuels or new aircraft.
The industry is currently trying to scale the production of “Sustainable Aviation Fuels”, which are drop-in replacements for fossil jet fuel. These fuels comprise both biofuels, made from either plants or waste biomass streams; and “synthetic” jet fuels, generated from electricity used to make hydrogen from water, and carbon dioxide captured from the air.
In terms of new aircraft, manufacturers are engaged in developing two new types of plane – hydrogen powered and battery powered. Current battery powered aircraft…
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Source : skynews
