“Airplanes Are Hard to Electrify”: Climate Alarmists Suddenly Discover Physics
Every once in a while something breaks through the fog in climate alarmists’ minds as to the actual practicality of the “Green Energy Transition” that they’ve assured us for years was easy, so easy it was basically free money.
But then we read in the Bloomberg “Newsletter Green Daily” that, um, “Heathrow Airport embodies the difficulties of cutting emissions from flying just as authorities are looking to add a third runway that will allow the UK’s largest airport to meet increasing demand for air travel.” Namely that you can’t power airplanes with batteries or used French-fry oil or pious wishes.
It seems that “The UK is trying to strike a difficult balance between sticking to its legally binding climate targets and expanding infrastructure seen as essential to economic growth.” The difficulty being they’re incompatible, despite the alarmists’ repeated assurance that cutting emissions would make us all rich. Blast.
It’s most unfortunate, and just in their moment of triumph. Incompatible is such an ugly word, though, so it’s best to slide one’s tongue or keyboard nimbly round the obstacles:
“One option is to make airlines pay a government levy to cover the cost of cleaner fuels and carbon capture, the UK’s Climate Change Committee said today as it released a report on the issue. But the levy would significantly raise the price of plane tickets. What’s more, both sustainable aviation fuels and carbon capture face significant challenges and are largely unproven at commercial scale.”
Those of us who like short words might rephrase “face significant challenges and are largely unproven at commercial scale” as “don’t work” or “are stuff you just made up”. Which brings us to the OK then stop flying approach, which has the virtue of avoiding a “difficult balance” between impossible and impossible:
“Adding a third runway to Britain’s largest airport ‘is not currently compatible with the UK’s net zero target,’ Nigel Topping, chair of the CCC, said in a statement. ‘Government needs to ensure that the aviation industry takes responsibility for the emissions it creates.’”
As in not emitting them? So you pay more and fly less? Um yeah:
“Air travel represents a growing share of global emissions and decarbonizing the sector is one of the most difficult challenges facing the energy transition. Airplanes are hard to electrify and lower-carbon alternatives to jet fuel, made from crops or waste, are expensive and insufficient to meet global demand. That makes adding more flights and more emissions irreconcilable with climate goals, unless the industry is forced to invest heavily in engineered removals and lower-carbon fuels, driving up its costs and the cost of flying.”
“Airplanes are hard to electricify” stands as one of the funniest examples of British understatement we have heard in a long time.
Back in the day when skeptics said the green climate agenda amounted to freezing in a cave and living on moss scraped from its walls, advocates laughed heartily at our failure to see that we’d all move from the dank dark cave of fossil fuels to the bright sunlit uplands of the sparkly new clean economy. We shall let the alarmists show the way in their electric jets.
source climatediscussionnexus.com