Planes, trains and automobiles: Mitigating the climate impact of transport

When it comes to the issue of sus­tain­able trans­port, the whole sec­tor, irre­spec­tive of mode: plane, train, lor­ry, bus, car or ship, is increas­ing­ly in the spot­light.

The cruise indus­try reg­u­lar­ly receives press atten­tion regard­ing the envi­ron­men­tal impact of cruise ships but oth­er seg­ments also feel the pres­sure of the press falling on them ready to cri­tique their efforts at ‘going green’.

The aero­space sec­tor in par­tic­u­lar is under­go­ing mas­sive changes, with a key con­sid­er­a­tion being the fuel con­sump­tion of air­craft and the fuel used to pow­er air­line fleets. In par­tial mit­i­ga­tion, UK-based long-haul car­ri­er Vir­gin has already announced that it will make his­to­ry when it oper­ates the world’s first transat­lantic flight pow­ered entire­ly by sus­tain­able avi­a­tion fuel (SAF) at the end of Novem­ber this year.

Steps like this are huge news for the indus­try, with busi­ness­es (includ­ing a num­ber here in Cardiff) now also look­ing at SAF to sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce car­bon foot­prints and emis­sions.

With the longer term view in mind, research organ­i­sa­tions such as Cran­well are inves­ti­gat­ing alter­na­tive fuel options includ­ing hydro­gen fuel cells, which also require sig­nif­i­cant changes in the design of air­craft as well as the logis­ti­cal impli­ca­tions around trans­porta­tion and safe stor­age of the hydro­gen itself. The solu­tion is not easy, nor is it quick and cheap.

Sus­tain­able Avi­a­tion

As not­ed above, air­craft oper­a­tors are already look­ing to reduce their reliance on con­ven­tion­al jet fuel in favour of SAF fuel options, how­ev­er, there remain ques­tions around tech­nol­o­gy and cost.

Cur­rent­ly, ana­lysts believe dif­fer­ent fuels and ener­gy den­si­ties mean that hydro­gen is like­ly to be the fuel for medi­um and long haul flights, which is about 80 per cent of the flight miles.

Air­bus has also announced a test pro­gramme using hydro­gen for medi­um and long haul flights, but for many in the aero­space indus­try, 2030–2035 is the goal for imple­ment­ing sus­tain­able avi­a­tion fuels with 2050 as the date for more sig­nif­i­cant changes and to give time to devel­op those.

It’s not just about the planes

Leg­isla­tive and struc­tur­al changes will also have an impact. France, for exam­ple, has already stopped short haul flights and placed the empha­sis on rail trav­el as a replace­ment.

Four hours or more is the cur­rent bench­mark for flights, although this may be reduced to two hours in the future. When it comes to pow­er­ing infra­struc­ture on the ground there is recog­ni­tion of the need to focus on the envi­ron­men­tal foot­print of trans­porta­tion facil­i­ties. In this regard there are many issues in rela­tion to elec­tric­i­ty.

Put into per­spec­tive, it was men­tioned in a pan­el of sus­tain­abil­i­ty experts recent­ly that the amount of green elec­tric­i­ty that the UK cur­rent­ly gen­er­ates on an annu­al basis will only sup­ply 80% of the needs of Heathrow Air­port for a year. Oth­er tech­nolo­gies will need to not only fill that 20 per cent gap but to allow for the rest of us to ben­e­fit from envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly ener­gy in our homes and offices.

The ques­tion of tim­ing

The timescale for the planned intro­duc­tion of alter­na­tives is cur­rent­ly set for five years. How­ev­er, such whole­sale change (bear­ing in mind the change is across all trans­port modes, not just avi­a­tion) requires more than just words and tests.

Intro­duc­ing new infra­struc­ture, new vehi­cles and ves­sels or entire­ly new pow­er-relat­ed tech­nolo­gies will require invest­ment and the focus of many indi­vid­u­als and aca­d­e­m­ic, cor­po­rate and pub­lic bod­ies on nation­al and inter­na­tion­al basis.

Cur­rent­ly I would ques­tion whether there is a long term plan; if there is, it’s hard to divine.