{"id":8620,"date":"2020-02-05T12:40:50","date_gmt":"2020-02-05T11:40:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=8620"},"modified":"2020-02-05T12:40:50","modified_gmt":"2020-02-05T11:40:50","slug":"sustainable-aviation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=8620","title":{"rendered":"Sustainable Aviation?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"1280px-heathrow_lon_04_07_77\"<\/a>Yesterday a coalition of British airlines, airports and manufacturers called “Sustainable Aviation” announced they would go “net” zero by you guessed it – 2050.\u00a0 Why is it 2050?\u00a0 Probably because its so far off it will be someone else’s problem.\u00a0\u00a0 The means they by which they go carbon neutral?\u00a0 Well its all the usual suspects, lets examine them in a bit more detail.<\/p>\n

More efficient aircraft<\/strong><\/p>\n

Aircraft are steadily growing more fuel efficient, better engines and lighter materials etc.\u00a0 This is good and its definitely true.\u00a0 As a kid I lived under a flight path.\u00a0 When the aircraft went over you couldn’t hear yourself think.\u00a0 My mum still has the odd aircraft come over.\u00a0 They are still loud but far quieter than they were.\u00a0 A quiet engine is an efficient engine.\u00a0 However there are limits how far this will get you and at the moment all efficiency gains are being undone by the increase in flights.<\/p>\n

Biofuels\/Fischer\u2013Tropsch<\/strong><\/p>\n

We went through this in our book<\/a>.\u00a0 To completely substitute worldwide would take an agricultural area the size of Belgium.\u00a0 The spokesman on the TV news clearly wasn’t talking about complete substitution.\u00a0 He was also talking about using 2nd generation biofuels, so there would be no food\/fuel competition.\u00a0 I was very surprised to see him mention\u00a0Fischer\u2013Tropsch.\u00a0 We describe this in the book.\u00a0 This reaction takes Hydrogen and carbon monoxide, using a transition metal catalyst, a lot of heat and pressure combines them to make alkanes of any chain length.\u00a0 The chain length is determined by the pressure used (largely).\u00a0 The question is where does the feedstock come from (can you make carbon monoxide from dioxide -not sure?), hydrogen could be split from water but do we really want to put a load of renewables in just so we can fly.\u00a0\u00a0 So the practicabilities of this are questionable as is the energy return on energy invested for both.\u00a0 See our book.<\/p>\n

Electric aircraft\/hydrogen<\/strong><\/p>\n

These are under development and are almost certainly feasible for short haul, but not for long haul.\u00a0 Long haul requires some kind of new battery technology, if its possible at all.\u00a0 Regular readers of this blog know I regard hydrogen as a complete waste of space (again see our book).\u00a0 But even if it did work hydrogen aircraft would require a complete redesign (people talk about a ‘flying wing’).\u00a0 This would have to pretty much start now and isn’t.\u00a0 To be fair the spokesmen I heard didn’t mention it.\u00a0 Nor did they see much contribution from electric aircraft by 2050.<\/p>\n

Offsetting<\/strong><\/p>\n

What they are relying on is offsetting.\u00a0 Largely planting trees or putting in renewables.\u00a0 The problem with this it seems like you’re doing something, but are you?\u00a0 Solar panels can be removed or broken.\u00a0 A lot of this is aimed at the developing world.\u00a0 Trees die.\u00a0 We’ve just had an example of this from Turkey.\u00a0 They planted millions of trees a year or so ago – its thought the great majority are dead already.<\/p>\n

What the aviation industry are not relying on, is less people flying or a halt to airport expansion.\u00a0 This is all a wheeze to make you think they are doing something when they’re not.\u00a0 In a post carbon world, we won’t by and large be able to fly -get used to it.<\/p>\n

Neil<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday a coalition of British airlines, airports and manufacturers called “Sustainable Aviation” announced they would go “net” zero by you guessed it – 2050.\u00a0 Why is it 2050?\u00a0 Probably because its so far off it will be someone else’s problem.\u00a0\u00a0 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[209,5,250,1],"tags":[269,270],"class_list":["post-8620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-pollution","category-climate-change","category-flying","category-uncategorized","tag-climate-change","tag-lifestyle"],"yoast_head":"\nSustainable Aviation? - The oil lamp - shining God's light on peak oil<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=8620\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=8620\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=8620\",\"name\":\"Sustainable Aviation? 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