Can flying be green? Christopher de Bellaigue looks at the challenges aviation faces in a world trying to decarbonise
Review by Chris Fitch
Producing an entire book on the future of flying in a net-zero world that could be easily read between take-off and landing is impressive. At less than 100 pages, Christopher de Bellaigue’s new book is a snappy yet detailed guide to the challenges aviation faces in a world trying to transition away from fossil fuels.
As the source of roughly 3.5 per cent of human-caused warming, funded by only a handful of the global population, ‘aviation has a strong claim to be the most damaging leisure activity around,’ he notes. With flight numbers already approaching one billion annually, and forecasting nothing but growth, growth, growth, especially in emerging markets such as China, it’s a problem that demands urgent attention.
Decarbonising aeroplanes carries head-scratching problems that can’t be easily sidestepped by electrification or other quick fixes. Heavy lithium-ion batteries carry only a fraction of the energy packed into the equivalent weight in jet fuel. Liquified hydrogen has potential but would require a complete redesign of the fuel infrastructure at airports worldwide. And internationally agreed offset schemes are flawed and lack regulatory teeth. From an Icelandic carbon capture and storage facility to a French helium airship factory, de Bellaigue travels the world, exploring prospective aviation solutions critically but optimistically, producing honest and clear assessments of each.
Out of all the big ideas, he seems most enamoured with SAF – sustainable aviation fuel. These are synthetic fuels, produced by sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, that can be simply mixed with regular jet fuel. No need for new airport infrastructure. The result: planes carry on as usual, without a significant net contribution of emissions to the atmosphere. It is, he claims, ‘the closest thing to a sure bet in aviation’s transition’. Nevertheless, the need for thousands of new SAF plants to scale up production from a few hundred thousand tonnes to the hundreds of millions consumed by planes annually highlights the immense challenge facing this industry. Perhaps biofuels can fill the gap, nobody really knows. There’s also the warming caused not by emissions, but by the contrail clouds produced behind planes, a problem that persists even with sustainable fuels.
There are no easy answers, but this is a book that can quickly get you up to speed on the difficult questions.
