The revival of electrification that we are seeing in passenger vehicles, unfortunately, is unlikely to adapt to heavier forms of transport – such as airplanes, cargo ships and semi-tractor trailers – in the foreseeable future. Today’s batteries simply cannot maintain enough energy to sufficiently compensate for their weight and volume. But that does not mean that we are still unable to take steps to reduce the carbon footprints of our commercial personnel and cargo transporters.
In his new book, How to avoid a climate disaster: the solutions we have and the innovations we need, the luminary of Bill Gates technology – with the help of countless subject matter experts – presents his comprehensive plan to halt the approaching environmental apocalypse, mitigate the effects of man-made climate change and keep the Earth habitable for the next generation .
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Adapted from How to avoid a climate disaster: the solutions we have and the advances we need, by Bill Gates, published on February 16, 2021 by Alfred A. Knopf, a seal of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC . Copyright © 2021 by Bill Gates.
Not long ago, my friend Warren Buffett and I were talking about how the world could decarbonize airplanes. Warren asked, “Why can’t we operate a battery-powered jumbo jet?” He already knew that when a jet takes off, the fuel it carries is responsible for 20 to 40% of its weight. So, when I told him this surprising fact – that you would need 35 times more batteries by weight to get the same energy from jet fuel – he understood immediately. The more power you need, the heavier your plane gets. At some point, it is so heavy that it cannot take off. Warren smiled, nodded and just said, “Ah.”
When you’re trying to power something as heavy as a container ship or jet, the rule I mentioned earlier – the bigger the vehicle you want to move and the farther you want to drive it without recharging, the harder it will be to start use electricity as your energy source – it becomes a law. Except for some unlikely discovery, batteries will never be light and powerful enough to move planes and ships over short distances.
Consider where the state of the art is today. The best all-electric plane on the market can carry two passengers, reach a top speed of 210 miles per hour and fly for three hours before recharging. * Meanwhile, a medium-capacity Boeing 787 can carry 296 passengers, reaching 650 miles per hour and flying for almost 20 hours before stopping for gas. In other words, a jet powered by fossil fuel can fly three times faster, six times longer, and carry almost 150 times more people than the best electric plane on the market.
The batteries are improving, but it is difficult to see how they will fill that gap. If we’re lucky, they can become up to three times more energy-dense than they are now; in that case, they would still be 12 times less dense in energy than gas or jet fuel. Our best bet is to replace aviation fuel with advanced biofuels and biofuels, but there are many awards that go with them.
The same goes for cargo ships. The best conventional container ships can carry 200 times more cargo than either of the two electric ships in operation and can travel routes 400 times longer. These are the main advantages for ships that need to cross entire oceans.
Given how important container ships have become in the global economy, I don’t think it will ever be financially viable to try to operate them with anything other than liquid fuels. Switching to alternatives would do us good; As shipping alone accounts for 3% of all emissions, the use of clean fuels would give us a significant reduction. Unfortunately, the fuel that container ships work with – it’s called bunker fuel – is very cheap, because it is made from the waste from the oil refining process. As the current fuel is very cheap, the Green Premium for ships is very high.
Would most people be willing to accept these increases? It is not clear. But consider that the last time the United States raised the federal gas tax – imposed any increase – was more than a quarter of a century ago, in 1993. I don’t think Americans are eager to pay more for gas.
There are four ways to reduce transport emissions.
One is to do less – less to drive, fly and dispatch. We must encourage more alternative ways, such as walking, cycling and hitchhiking, and it is great that some cities are using smart urban plans to do just that.
Another way to reduce emissions is to use less high-carbon materials in the manufacture of cars – although this does not affect the fuel emissions we cover in this chapter. Each car is made of materials like steel and plastic that cannot be manufactured without emitting greenhouse gases. The less of these materials we need in our cars, the smaller their carbon footprint will be.
The third way to reduce emissions is to use fuels more efficiently. This subject receives a lot of attention from lawmakers and the press, at least with regard to passenger cars and trucks; most major economies have fuel efficiency standards for these vehicles, and they have made a big difference by forcing automakers to finance advanced engineering for more efficient engines.
But the standards don’t go far enough. For example, there are suggested emission standards for maritime transport and international aviation, but they are almost inapplicable. Which country’s jurisdiction would cover the carbon emissions of a container ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean?
Furthermore, while making and using more efficient vehicles are important steps in the right direction, they will not lead us to zero. Even if you’re burning less gas, you’re still burning gas.
This leads me to the fourth – and most effective – way to move towards zero emissions in transportation: switching to electric vehicles and alternative fuels.
We can accelerate the transition by adopting policies that encourage people to buy EVs and creating a network of charging stations to make them more practical to own. Commitments across the country can help increase the supply of cars and reduce costs; China, India and several European countries have announced targets to eliminate fossil fuel vehicles – mainly passenger cars – in the coming decades. California has pledged to buy only electric buses by 2029 and to ban the sale of gas-powered cars until 2035.
Next, in order to operate all of these EVs that we hope to have on the road, we will need a lot of clean electricity – one more reason why it is so important to deploy renewable sources and pursue innovations in generation and storage.
Finally, we need a lot of effort to explore all the ways to make advanced biofuels and inexpensive electrofuels. Companies and researchers are exploring several different paths – for example, new ways to make hydrogen using electricity, or using solar energy, or using microbes that naturally produce hydrogen as a by-product. The more we explore, the more opportunities we will create for innovations.