As the aviation industry fights to survive the coronavirus pandemic, some economists and engineers see the crisis as an opportunity to use stimulus funds to propel air travel to a carbon-neutral future. The aviation industry which accounts for around 5% of all green-house gases, has been experimenting with technologies like battery, solar and even hydrogen. So far, none of these projects have gone beyond testing and are far from becoming commercially viable.
However, in the midst of an industry-wide crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic globally, the world’s largest plane maker ( Airbus) announced plans to put zero-emission aircraft into commercial service before 2035. The question thus becomes…
…Why now?
Economists, climate change experts and engineers alike are arguing that if governments attach climate conditions to bailouts handed out in the pandemic, it could not only help save the aviation industry, but could also help reduce its carbon footprint and crucially, create new jobs.
The aviation industry has been hit hard by the pandemic, the drastic drop in air travel led to airlines cancelling orders for new planes; tens of thousands of workers were laid off as a result and profit margins declined significantly. In the US, $25 billion was offered to US airlines through the cares act. However, industry experts as well as scholars and officials believe that government should be attaching climate conditions to stimulus. Experts are of the opinion that the underlying benefits of adding green conditionality is that it protects both the current jobs as well as induce new jobs both in the short term in some of the research intensive industries and in the long term in terms of actually building new products.
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So what options are available for the sector to de-carbonize?
The industry has been exploring ideas for a few decades. Despite its continued heavy dependency on kerosene based jet-fuel, it has managed to reduce its emissions per passenger by about 70% since the 1960’s simply by focusing on making planes that are lighter and can fly farther using less fuel. The problem is that there are way more people flying now than there were in the 60’s and that has wiped out all of those gains and while researchers predict that the pandemic would lead to emissions dropping by more than a third (1/3) this year, it’s expected that air traffic would rebound in the coming years. All of which leaves the sector nowhere closer to hitting targets of cutting CO2 emissions in half by 2050 compared to 2005 levels.
“Hydrogen: Aviation’s fuel of the future”- Airbus
Gregoire Carpentier, the cofounder of Supaero Decarbo believes that in the aviation’s ambitions to become less carbon intensive, the aviation industry faces a problem unlike any other industry. While many alternatives to jet-fuel have been proposed, they all share one common problem which is the ‘economic-efficiency’ of kerosene based jet- fuel. Bio- fuel derived from organic bio-mass are an alternative that is already available, but it’s currently more expensive than kerosene and requires huge investment to achieve wide spread availability. Battery technology has been tested by some companies including Airbus; but the company believes that they are just too heavy to be economically viable in planes. Solar on the other hand, simply doesn’t generate enough power. A solar powered plane made by a start-up ‘solar impulse’ has a wing span wider than a 747 and is as light as a family car but can still only average 47 miles per hour; this is where Airbus is hoping hydrogen can become “aviation’s fuel of the future”.
Airbus management said it can have these hydrogen planes in production by 2035 and is hoping that by announcing them now, it can prompt the rest of the industry to follow suit. They stated that “we are putting a stake in the ground and making it very clear that the aviation industry needs to also be powered by renewable energy”. But even hydrogen has its problems, right now it’s projected to be more expensive than kerosene and would take up more space which means less seats on the planes. There is also the problem that hydrogen is currently synthesized mostly by burning fossil fuels and while it might be good for powering small vehicles, it may not be efficient enough to power large planes on long whole flights.
And of course, none of these technology or its development comes cheap. Llewellyn Glenn, the VP for zero emission aircraft, Airbus when talking about the ambition to make these planes stated that “it is an ambition which would require billions in terms of investment”. Airbus hopes that some of that money would come from the government if it’s to turn its hydrogen concept into a reality.
In France, Airbus’s home, the government has attached climate conditions to recent investments. Airfrance for example was bailed out by the French government to the tune of about $8.2 billion in June last year under the condition that the airline would half (1/2) its carbon emissions by 2030.
But while France may be using the pandemic to push for its aviation industry to reduce emissions, for some countries, that opportunity may already have passed. Brian O’callaghan a researcher at Oxford University Economic Recovery project indicated that “a total of $140 billion have been spent on aviation and out of that amount, only 10% ($14 billion) have been channeled to green conditions, that is 90% of airline bailouts have been channeled towards the continuation of a dirty industry without enabling the long term transition”.
Should this endeavor translate into reality, profit realization amidst innovation would best describe the aviation industry in the nearest future.
