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This is a very poor article. The very first sentence is already wrong: "It could lead to net zero emissions for air travel." No, it can't. Aviation has a varie
by hannob 6y ago
This is a very poor article. The very first sentence is already wrong: "It could lead to net zero emissions for air travel."
No, it can't. Aviation has a variety of emission sources, which include not only CO2, but also others like nitrous oxides and water vapour, which creates contrains and impacts cloud formation. There's huge uncertainty how large these effects are, but they're significant.
It's not particularly surprising that you can turn CO2 into jet fuel. The issue is: It's not a complete fix for aviation's climate problem and the efficiency is extremely low. The amount of electricity needed is enormous.
Worthy read (title is about hydrogen, but it also covers e-fuels quite a bit): https://www.cleansky.eu/news/hydrogen-powered-aviation-preparing-for-take-off https://www.cleansky.eu/news/hydrogen-powered-aviation-prepa...
Key takeaways: Aviation CO2 emissions are 2%, but overall emissions are somewhere between 3 and 7%. And using E-Fuels to power future aviation (with current growth projections) requires more electricity than all the electricity that is genreated today.
- adrianN 6y agoAt least the other effects of air travel don't last in the atmosphere for millennia.
- codingdave 6y agoI feel like the article was clear that this was just a step in a potential direction, not a full solution, and they explicitly said this wasn't even a viable for a single flight as of yet. If anyone comes up with a "complete fix", I'm all for it - in the meantime, looking into partial fixes to at least improve our situation sounds like a good idea to me.
- selectodude 6y agoI think the key takeaway from the laws of thermodynamics is that we can pull all the CO2 out of the air once we have fusion power. Before that point, it's not going anywhere.
- adrianN 6y agoThere are plenty of carbon free power sources that will be cheaper than fusion for the foreseeable future.
- cogman10 6y agoI know I'm being a smart ass, but technically those are all fusion powered ;) Solar and wind are the result of the solar radiation which comes from fusion.
- ben_w 6y agoIf we’re being pedants: Tidal power is from the initial formation of the solar system. Geothermal is a roughly 50-50 mixture of the initial formation heat of the Earth’s creation and the decay of radioisotopes in the core. (I was going to add something about the crystallisation of liquid outer core onto the surface of the solid inner core, but Wikipedia implies that’s not a big source of heat).
- orwin 6y agoYes, and those energy are very mineral intensive and the current number of new installation per year need to triple to avoid creating new coal or gas plants altogether. Is it sustainable? And i agree, fusion is at least 50 years away of a working ITER unless a breakthrough in supraconductor is done
- ben_w 6y ago> Is it sustainable? Yes. Unlike coal, oil, and natural gas — which are dug out of the ground and burned — the stuff you dig out of the ground to make PV and wind turbines can be recycled into more PV and wind turbines when the products reach end-of-life.
- cma 6y agoThey probably meant carbon emissions. > water vapour, which creates contrains and impacts cloud formation. There's huge uncertainty how large these effects are, but they're significant. Water vapor emissions aren't cumulative in the same way as CO2. It would be potentially an impact of what ever level of air travel you have, but it wouldn't accumulate over time like carbon emissions, and so could be sustainable if air travel is held at a fixed level.