The air transport sector needs to eliminate its polluting emissions to survive. It expects the first hydrogen plane by 2035 and until then it will bet on biofuels
The plane is the most polluting means of transport on the planet. There is no discussion. For each passenger transported, an aircraft emits an average of 285 grams of CO2 per kilometer traveled compared to 68 grams for a bus or 14 for a train. These are data from the European Environment Agency. “We are responsible for almost 3% of the gas emissions that cause climate change,” acknowledges Javier Gándara, president of the Airline Association (ALA). Gándara doesn’t mind admitting it, because the air sector “is committed” to turning this situation around.
Your survival goes into it. France has been the first country to ban short-haul flights that have an alternative high-speed train with a journey time of two and a half hours or less. In other words, if Spain follows this path, it would not be possible to fly between Madrid and Seville or between Barcelona and Valencia. And the European Union has put on the table a new policy to tax fossil fuels, in an attempt to attack the pockets of those who pollute the most, as a more efficient way to advance decarbonisation. Everything indicates that kerosene, the energy that drives airplanes, will double its price between now and 2033.
The airline industry has perfectly captured the message. Fuel accounts for many airlines between 35 and 45% of their total costs. No one imagines that a company can continue to be profitable if its main expense is multiplied by two. One of the possible solutions would be to increase the price of tickets. Pass on to the customer this escalation in the value of the raw material. Will flying be something elitist again, as it was in the 70s and 80s? Tickets may become more expensive, but the sector does not contemplate going back to the past. “Aviation has been democratized and will continue to be so. It is wonderful that anyone can take a plane to go sightseeing or to visit a relative for an amount of money that is not exceptional”, values the president of ALA.
In fact, the forecast is that air travel will continue to grow. The pandemic has been a brutal blow. A straight to the jaw. The airlines lived in 2020 and the beginning of 2021, the most critical moment in their history. Worse than 9/11. And now they are getting up off the canvas. They are still dazed, but they look with some optimism to the future. “It may be difficult to recover part of the business trip, but we are going to continue traveling, because flying is a dream and we all want to dream.”
The director of business development for Airbus Technologies in Spain, Silvia Lazcano, believes that we have faced “an unprecedented crisis”, in which “how important it is to transport goods and people” has been demonstrated. In her opinion, “society does not want to stop traveling.” And she adds: “Of course, those face-to-face encounters between different cultures, which only aviation can bring about, make the world a more caring and tolerant place.”
By 2023, at the latest by 2024, the sector hopes to recover the level of activity prior to Covid-19. “We are going to return to sustained growth,” concludes the head of the largest European aircraft manufacturer. Every day, the skies will be filled with more than 105,000 flights (in 2019 there were 38 million commercial operations). The engine room will be at full capacity again and the emissions will return to triggered values. But now, after the virus and with the new global tsunami that is approaching with climate change, the States are not going to be so permissive with those who pollute. Here you can say that ‘Houston, we have a problem’.
Roadmap
What is the airline sector going to do to adapt to the new times? “We have a roadmap,” says Gándara. The main problem is that aviation is one of the six global sectors that have been classified as difficult to decarbonise. The technology is not yet mature enough to make that leap. Today, making a plane fly, something that seemed like witchcraft to our great-grandparents, is not possible using electric motors or renewable energies. But the sector has a plan and believes that by 2050 it will be in a position to achieve CO2 neutrality. That is, to reduce their emissions to zero.
Airbus, which competes with Boeing for world hegemony in aircraft manufacturing, this week presented an agreement with the CFM consortium to work very seriously on a gas turbine that feeds on liquid hydrogen. Eliminating fossil kerosene is possible. The plane of the future will fly with hydrogen. But for now it is that: the plane of the future. Airbus does not believe that until before 2035 it will be able to create a prototype capable of being propelled with this ecological fuel. It goes long.
However, those responsible believe that they are on the right path. They bet on a fuel that does not run out, does not generate waste and is achieved from a chemical reaction. This process, known as electrolysis, requires a large amount of electricity. This must be taken into account because for the final result of the equation to be sustainable, the fluid must come from renewable sources.
IN YOUR CONTEXT
-
38
There were millions of flights in the world in 2019, before the pandemic. In 2020, the traffic was reduced by 60%. By 2023, at most by 2024, the sector is confident of recovering the pre-covid level.
The sector asks for support for the transition
The road to zero emissions is not going to be easy. The EU is ready to tax fossil fuels steeply. The sector demands more flexibility and time to be able to invest in biofuels and other solutions.
For now, other ways to implement it in aircraft, such as the electric motor, are ruled out. “Airbus’s commitment to hydrogen is decisive. We already have several ideas, both for jet aircraft and turbofans (propeller engines), as well as a breakthrough design, in which the two wings of the aircraft are joined in a central body capable of housing the considerable size of the deposits of this green fuel”, points out Lazcano, who in addition to being an Airbus director is a doctor in Chemical Sciences, with a master’s degree in Polymeric Materials. The next decade will be key to defining the aircraft of the future. A lot of research is needed to solve critical problems such as the higher density of hydrogen compared to traditional fuel, which forces a large part of the fuselage to be used for tank storage.
Synthetic fuels
And what do we do until then? The answer is SAF. Those are the trendy acronyms in the air transport sector. They stand for Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF). Translated into Spanish: sustainable fuel for aviation. That is, synthetic fuels that do not pollute or that come from waste or vegetable matter that has captured carbon during its growth. It is not something new. Nazi Germany was already moving heavy vehicles using biodiesel and its engineers were pioneers in achieving oil substitutes. It must be remembered that the shortage of hydrocarbons was one of the Achilles’ heels of the Wehrmacht and the Luftwafe.
So if it’s something that has been known for almost a century, why hasn’t what looks like a solution been developed until now? “We need economies of scale and make billion-dollar investments to be able to produce SAF in large quantities,” says Andreu Puñet, president of the Spanish Association of Petroleum Product Operators (AOP). Right now, the cheapest biofuel that exists is three times more expensive than kerosene.
Can an airplane really fly using the peels of potatoes or beets as a source of energy? Yes, if we take into account that the SAF is not used at 100%, but is mixed with kerosene in different proportions (current engines are prepared to work at 50%, but this percentage is expected to continue to grow). “What we need is a regulatory framework that provides stability, as well as high demand from the market,” warns Puñet. In other words, the main key to reducing emissions in the sector in the short term requires public support and that the airlines themselves believe in the SAF. It will be the beginning of a new way of flying, cleaner and more sustainable until the arrival of hydrogen. It’s possible. Now the only thing missing is a new push to take off, like the one the Wright brothers had on that day in December 1903, when aviation was born.
The Single European Sky and other ideas to reduce pollution
The hydrogen plane will not arrive before 2035 and it will still be experimental. And the SAF or biofuels are technically possible but they need a boost and incentive that has not just taken off. There is another series of measures that would allow airlines to reduce the carbon dioxide they emit into the atmosphere right now.
How? For example, optimizing routes and air navigation control. Accelerating the process of creating what is known as the Single European Sky, which prevents aircraft from traveling more kilometers than necessary.
What else? Be more flexible in the conditions to assign and keep the ‘slots’. This English word defines the space and hours that a company has at an airport to operate a certain destination. The rules say that if you do not meet a minimum number of flights per year, you lose this preferential position. These rigid rules have given rise to surreal situations. Lufthansa warned in January that this year it would have to operate 18,000 ‘ghost’ or empty flights so as not to lose its rights on the grid of the main European aerodromes due to the impact of omicron. Quite an environmental waste.
The last field of action refers to technical improvements in aircraft. An ‘Airbus 320 Neo’, for example, is up to 25% more efficient than its predecessor (‘Airbus 320’). “We are working on new materials and even on parts of the plane that can be moved to improve aerodynamics in flight. There is a lot of room for improvement,” says Silvia Lazcano, director of Airbus in Spain.