Speaker 1: From Bloomberg News and iHeartRadio. It's the big take. I'm
Speaker 1: West Kasova today, how to build a cleaner airplane? We
Speaker 1: all know airplanes are big polluters, and with so many
Speaker 1: people choosing to fly more, especially now after being cooped
Speaker 1: up during the pandemic, it's a problem that's only getting worse.
Speaker 1: As is often the case, Europe is taking the lead
Speaker 1: to encourage or you might say pressure, the airlines and
Speaker 1: airplane makers to clean up their act.
Speaker 2: It's a really multifaceted problem. It's not just the technical
Speaker 2: or business side. There's these big societal questions and big
Speaker 2: economic questions for some she's in Europe.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg reporters sit at Phillip in London and William Wilkson Frankfurt.
Speaker 1: That's who you heard just there cover the industry's efforts
Speaker 1: to build a plane that can fly long distances without
Speaker 1: burning fossil fuel. For a sense of just how far
Speaker 1: we have to go, I asked Sid to tell us
Speaker 1: the environmental cost of a typical commercial flight today.
Speaker 3: So a flight from Frankfurt to New York on a
Speaker 3: Boeing seven for seven, which is rare now but it's
Speaker 3: still used. Emits about the same amount of carbon dioxide
Speaker 3: as heating four hundred and forty German homes for about
Speaker 3: a year. That is about two thousand kilograms or four
Speaker 3: hundred pounds per passenger, which is a massive amount of
Speaker 3: carbon dioxide. Airlines are flying hundreds and thousands of planes
Speaker 3: at any given time, and so the scale of the
Speaker 3: problem is massive.
Speaker 1: Will I guess that really sets up what we're talking
Speaker 1: about today, which are these efforts to try to make
Speaker 1: planes less carbon intensive, cleaner to fly.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Indeed, European countries, especially bringing in quite stringent climate targets
Speaker 2: and aviations, had something of a free pass up until now,
Speaker 2: but looking forward, countries like Germany or France can't hit
Speaker 2: their climate targets without now tackling this problem. And then
Speaker 2: this really fiendishly difficult problem of reducing emissions from aircraft
Speaker 2: without destroying the aviation sector and without damaging transport connections
Speaker 2: within Europe.
Speaker 4: It's a really difficult problem.
Speaker 3: It's also the airline industry itself has said itself net
Speaker 3: zero targets by twenty to fifty, so it's not just
Speaker 3: the airline industry coming under pressure from the government, but
Speaker 3: they've also set their own targets, which are crucial in
Speaker 3: order for them to sort of decalbanize the net zero
Speaker 3: by twenty fifty.
Speaker 1: So when you say net zero by twenty fifty for
Speaker 1: the entire industry, what exactly.
Speaker 4: Does that mean?
Speaker 3: When it's in nets zero, it basically means that they're
Speaker 3: not putting any new carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But
Speaker 3: essentially they're using methods to try and reduce carbon emissions
Speaker 3: which are already in the air, bringing back that carbon
Speaker 3: without adding any more, so you don't add any more
Speaker 3: carbon into the air, but also not flying truly zero.
Speaker 1: And will how do you do that? Because we're not
Speaker 1: really talking about planes no longer polluting at all. It's
Speaker 1: kind of they're offsetting it elsewhere. Is that right?
Speaker 2: There are several ways airlines and plane manufacturers talking about
Speaker 2: doing it. One cruiser one of these things called sustainable
Speaker 2: aviation fuels, and they basically recycle carbon that is already
Speaker 2: above ground and turn them into fuels, so you're not
Speaker 2: taking any more carbon from below the ground. So examples
Speaker 2: are things like biofuels, where you kind of turn animal
Speaker 2: fat into a combustible feel. There are even more kind
Speaker 2: of sci fi ones like synthetic fuel where you would
Speaker 2: extract carbon from the atmosphe and combine it with hydrogen,
Speaker 2: and then you make a synthetic hydrocarbon that's very similar
Speaker 2: chemical properties to normal jet fuel, but because the carbon's
Speaker 2: being drawn out of the atmosphere, it's not taking any
Speaker 2: more carbon from below the air. Of course, those fuels
Speaker 2: do generate carbon dioxide when they're burned, and.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk a little bit more about sustainable
Speaker 1: aviation fuel later in the show. What are some other
Speaker 1: ways that plane manufacturers are trying to lower how much
Speaker 1: these planes pollute.
Speaker 3: There has been a lot of technology developments in terms
Speaker 3: of reducing fuel burn with the existing engines. So as
Speaker 3: planes get newer and newer generations, engines tend to emit
Speaker 3: less CO two because they burn less fuel, and improving
Speaker 3: efficiency is one way of doing it. The other way
Speaker 3: they've been talking about is improving efficiency in terms of
Speaker 3: air navigation. So instead of having planes that are hovering
Speaker 3: for a while, you have the plane's flight direct routings
Speaker 3: and essentially allows you to negate the carbon impact from
Speaker 3: planes circling endlessly waiting to land. We've been clear for landing.
Speaker 2: The issue with those kind of approaches is to get
Speaker 2: like marginal improvements in how much carbon a flight or
Speaker 2: a per passenger emits. And the problem is is aviation,
Speaker 2: as countries get richer, is just growing so fast that
Speaker 2: it really just negates any of these really piecemeal approaches
Speaker 2: that get you these marginal environmental benefits. So, yeah, engines
Speaker 2: get better with each generation, but so many more people fly,
Speaker 2: the environmental benefit is only really there in a kind
Speaker 2: of an abstract per person measure, and that's not how
Speaker 2: carbon's polluted. I think environmentalists and academics would say, you
Speaker 2: have to focus on the absolute amount of carbon emissions
Speaker 2: coming from aviation, and that is continuing to arise, unabated
Speaker 2: by minor improvements and technology.
Speaker 1: And one of the things you write about is one
Speaker 1: reason why so many more people are flying is that
Speaker 1: for a long time, flying got really really cheap. It's
Speaker 1: expensive now, but we all got used to such cheap
Speaker 1: faars that people started flying who never flew before and
Speaker 1: started flying more often than they ever flew before.
Speaker 3: More people flying more often is basically what drove the
Speaker 3: aviation industry, but it's also been the sort of source
Speaker 3: of a lot of the carbon emissions and wild planes
Speaker 3: that you fly these days are way cleaner than what
Speaker 3: they used to be twenty years ago or fifty years ago.
Speaker 3: The number of planes that are in the sky are
Speaker 3: also far greater than they used to be twenty years
Speaker 3: ago and fifty years ago, which sort of creates this
Speaker 3: new problem where you're trying to reduce emissions on a
Speaker 3: per plane basis, but if there are more planes flying
Speaker 3: in the sky, then you're not really addressing the core
Speaker 3: issue as a whole.
Speaker 4: It's not just people that are flying more.
Speaker 2: If you think about how our contemporary world works, you've
Speaker 2: got kind of next day delivery. So much freight is
Speaker 2: done by n now because we want things so quickly,
Speaker 2: and that's another change that's happened, and that's causing more flights.
Speaker 2: Economies grow and people get rich. There's an increase in
Speaker 2: how much stuff they order online, things like medicines and
Speaker 2: food like that's just getting moved around the world at
Speaker 2: such a fast paced by aviation now, and that's another
Speaker 2: huge change that we've seen maybe over the last thirty
Speaker 2: years as well.
Speaker 1: Why is flying so much cheaper than it used to be.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously fuel is more expensive now, but does
Speaker 1: that account for all of it?
Speaker 3: So a lot of that is because of Europe essentially
Speaker 3: in the nineteen nineties opened up the skies to competition
Speaker 3: and allowed airlines like Ryanair and others to thrive where
Speaker 3: you could be an operator running services from your base
Speaker 3: in Ireland, but you can operate services across the continent,
Speaker 3: and that's spurred a lot of other discount carriers like
Speaker 3: easy Jet and Whizzer, who all operate on the same model,
Speaker 3: where you have planes that are based across different countries
Speaker 3: flying to different countries without having to get bogged down
Speaker 3: in If you're an airline from the UK, you can
Speaker 3: only fly to and from the UK, and within the
Speaker 3: UK it's only restrict to flying in the UK. Similarly
Speaker 3: for Germany and other countries, where now you can have
Speaker 3: airlines that are not based in your country but have
Speaker 3: local units or just have bases in those countries and
Speaker 3: they're sort of flying routes that would normally be reserved
Speaker 3: for the one or two dominant carriers.
Speaker 2: In This shift has been really important for Europe's economic cohesion.
Speaker 2: In Europe, you roughly have a very wealthy Northern Europe
Speaker 2: with advanced manufacturing and world class services economy, and then
Speaker 2: you have like a southern Rim that's always traditionally had
Speaker 2: like higher unemployment, less industry, and those places kind of
Speaker 2: in Greece, parts of Spain, parts of southern Italy are
Speaker 2: really dependent on cheap aviation to bring wealthy tourists from
Speaker 2: northern parts, from those kind of wealthy areas of Northern
Speaker 2: Europe and to get them spending money in poorer parts
Speaker 2: of Southern Europe. This is another challenge that the aviation
Speaker 2: sector in European society faces in trying to cut missions.
Speaker 4: You really starting to unpick kind.
Speaker 2: Of the economic fabric of some relatively vulnerable countries if
Speaker 2: you move too quickly on this, and if you increase
Speaker 2: taxes or try and just do things to then demand
Speaker 2: for cheap aviation. It's a really multifaceted problem. It's not
Speaker 2: just the technical or business side. There's these big societal
Speaker 2: questions and big economic questions for some countries in.
Speaker 1: Europe, and we're starting to see now exactly that a
Speaker 1: lot of pressure from governments to cut down on these
Speaker 1: short routes. Europe has really good train travel, and like
Speaker 1: say the United States, where it's almost impossible to get
Speaker 1: long distances by training, Europe it's easy to do it.
Speaker 1: And so it seems that governments are starting to crack
Speaker 1: down on some of these shorter routes.
Speaker 3: There is a massive crackdown, I mean we saw that
Speaker 3: during the pandemic when a lot of the aid to
Speaker 3: the airlines was died to decarbanization goals, and essentially there
Speaker 3: was a lot of pressure on governments to say that
Speaker 3: airlines are taking bailout should also be forced to scrap
Speaker 3: routes that are easily sort of duplicated on short train journeys.
Speaker 3: And we have seen a sort of rise in areas
Speaker 3: where there is a train alternative that's convenient. We have
Speaker 3: seen a rise in train travel. I mean London Paris,
Speaker 3: for instance, is one of the busiest sectors. They used
Speaker 3: to be sort of dominated by the airlines and now
Speaker 3: we've seen the Eurostar taking them as much as seventy
Speaker 3: or eighty percent of traffic.
Speaker 1: So we talked about how there is this industry goal
Speaker 1: of reaching net zero by twenty fifty that's coming up
Speaker 1: pretty fast. Where are we How close to that goal
Speaker 1: is the industry right now?
Speaker 3: It isn't very close at the moment. They're working on
Speaker 3: a multiple measures, but the aviation industry is one that
Speaker 3: has very very very long lead times, and it also
Speaker 3: has very stringent safety requirements, so you can't have technology
Speaker 3: adoption as quickly as say the auto industry, where we
Speaker 3: have electric vehicles grading prominence far more significantly and fundamentally.
Speaker 3: This is also the problem of physics, so problems that
Speaker 3: are easily sold on the ground that much harder to solve.
Speaker 3: When you're in the air looking.
Speaker 2: At twenty to fifty, it's very, very difficult to see
Speaker 2: how the industry reaches net zero without some kind of unexpected,
Speaker 2: almost like miraculous breakthrough in technology.
Speaker 1: When we come back, how about a plane that runs
Speaker 1: on hydrogen sid Right before the break, Will was talking
Speaker 1: about how hard it will be to reach this net
Speaker 1: zero go about twenty fifty without some sort of really
Speaker 1: big breakthroughs, and airplane manufacturers are working on some pretty far.
Speaker 3: Out stuff absolutely, so Ebus is promising to build a
Speaker 3: hydrogen powered plane that enters into commercial services sometime in
Speaker 3: the mid twenty thirties, and so that's only fifteen years away.
Speaker 3: They're working on couple solutions. One of them is fuel
Speaker 3: cell powered, so essentially think of it like a fuel
Speaker 3: cell powering your hydrogen cars. So you have a little
Speaker 3: bit of hydrogen that essentially generates electricity that powers electric motors.
Speaker 3: That power is a plane. That is the basic of
Speaker 3: fuel cell technology. You also have hydrogen combustion, where it
Speaker 3: works more like a traditional jet engine, where instead of
Speaker 3: burning kerosene, a jet engine burns hydrogen. And at the
Speaker 3: moment they're working on both solutions. Air Bus is sort
Speaker 3: of throwing its weight more towards fuel cell technology because
Speaker 3: it does seem to be the solution, especially for smaller
Speaker 3: planes that fly shorter distances. It does seem to be
Speaker 3: something that could be attainable. We've also seen startups like
Speaker 3: zero Avia and Universal Hydrogen also approaching the same fuel
Speaker 3: cell technology solution. It's really a question of how we
Speaker 3: get there. Rolls Royce is also working on hydrogen combustion.
Speaker 3: So depending on which technology works, the beat, I mean,
Speaker 3: we may see one or two of these solutions actually
Speaker 3: working on planes that fly in the sky. Is by
Speaker 3: twenty thirty five, if you.
Speaker 2: Look at the automotive sector, by kind of Chinese regulations
Speaker 2: and also the force of Tesla's rise, the whole industry
Speaker 2: is kind of swung behind more or less completely to
Speaker 2: battery electric vehicles. There's this big need to scale up
Speaker 2: these solutions quickly to hit the twenty fifty target. Got
Speaker 2: lots of different companies are working on lots of different technologies,
Speaker 2: and there's not really kind of an industry consensus about
Speaker 2: what the solution is. And that's obviously something you would
Speaker 2: need to have to hit these twenty to fifty.
Speaker 3: Goals, especially if you want to get the infrastructure in place,
Speaker 3: because flying an airplane the spowered by hydrogens one solution,
Speaker 3: but then you also need to fuel up the aircraft.
Speaker 3: You need to be able to handle the aircraft that
Speaker 3: airport's around the world, So you need to build up
Speaker 3: an infrastructure that is capable of supporting those aircraft across
Speaker 3: the world, not just in Europe or the US or
Speaker 3: any You have to be able to sort of scale
Speaker 3: up that solution and deploy it and ensure that there
Speaker 3: sufficient supply of hydrogen around the world, and so that's
Speaker 3: all going to take some time to develop.
Speaker 2: Hydrogen is now being seen as a kind of silver
Speaker 2: bullet for several so called hard to abate sectors. Companies
Speaker 2: want to use it to get to zero emissions. In
Speaker 2: the steel sector, companies want to use it to get
Speaker 2: to zero emissions in the chemical sector cement as well.
Speaker 4: So you have the world going from a kind of tiny.
Speaker 2: Negligible, almost non existent green hydrogen production capacity suddenly needs
Speaker 2: to have enough hydrogen to kind of decarbonize vast ways
Speaker 2: of industry and aviation will if it goes down a
Speaker 2: hydrogen path, be competing with those industries for that fuel.
Speaker 2: Even if you can solve the technical challenge, there's a
Speaker 2: major business economic challenge there.
Speaker 1: I suppose. Also, if they were able to build these
Speaker 1: planes and they flew successfully, there's still thousands and thousands
Speaker 1: of the current aircraft that would have to be phased
Speaker 1: out over many, many years. So we're looking at probably
Speaker 1: decades right before you would even be able to convert
Speaker 1: the fleet absolutely.
Speaker 3: I mean, most aircraft have a service life of about twenty
Speaker 3: five years, and so we're still going to be seeing
Speaker 3: conventional aircraft being delivered into the twenty thirties, so twenty
Speaker 3: five years from that is into the twenty sixties.
Speaker 1: So that's hydrogen, which sounds like it's a while away,
Speaker 1: but you report that is not the only renewable feel
Speaker 1: that playmakers are looking at.
Speaker 3: So aside from hydrogen, there's also companies that are exploring
Speaker 3: hybrid electric or electric powered aircraft. So we have a
Speaker 3: company called Heart Aerospace as a startup based in Sweden
Speaker 3: that's talking about building a thirty passenger aircraft that has
Speaker 3: a range of flying about two hundred kilometers on electric
Speaker 3: power alone, as or even four hundred or eight hundred
Speaker 3: kilometers with the combination of a hybrid technology where the
Speaker 3: hybrid engine generates electricity for the aircraft, And that could
Speaker 3: also be a solution. But given the fact that lithium
Speaker 3: ion batteries aren't great a storing large amounts of energy,
Speaker 3: we may not see that working for sort of long
Speaker 3: haul intercontinental aircraft.
Speaker 2: One thing that made fossil fuels so successful is that
Speaker 2: they're just so energy dense. Of course, the other thing
Speaker 2: is is when you go on a long haul flight,
Speaker 2: you're actually getting rid of the fossil fuels from fuel
Speaker 2: tanks as you fly. The fuel consumption is not linear
Speaker 2: on a flight. You burn a lot of fuel at
Speaker 2: the start, and then because the plane's getting lighter because
Speaker 2: you're burning fuel, you need less fuel further along the flight.
Speaker 2: So the calculation for long distance is based on the
Speaker 2: aircraft losing weight as it travels, and obviously you can't
Speaker 2: do that with lithium ion batteries. You lose the energy
Speaker 2: from the battery, but the weight still there. Until we
Speaker 2: see some kind of real and this may not even
Speaker 2: happen in our lifetimes, a kind of real step change
Speaker 2: in battery density or or something like that, you're not
Speaker 2: going to see battery power planes on long hal flights.
Speaker 1: So it looks like things are looking up thirty years
Speaker 1: in the future. But when we come back, where can
Speaker 1: he done to reduce plane pollution right now? Well, as
Speaker 1: you say, both hydrogen and batteries to power planes are
Speaker 1: ways off. So can the sustainable aviation fuels that you
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier help with some of the emissions problems? In
Speaker 1: the meantime, while they're developing these things.
Speaker 4: There's a variety of them.
Speaker 2: So you have biofuel based sustainable aviation fuel, which might
Speaker 2: take animal fat and turn that into a combustible kind
Speaker 2: of hydrocarbon. Then in Germany in particular, they're working on
Speaker 2: some slightly more out of left field fuels called synthetic
Speaker 2: aviation fuels, which basically would pull carbon out the atmosphere
Speaker 2: and combine it through a chemical process, which was the
Speaker 2: chemical process that the Germans used in World War Two
Speaker 2: to turn coal into fuel for the Luffaffer and for
Speaker 2: their kind of soldiers when Germany couldn't.
Speaker 4: Get access to oil field.
Speaker 2: Through this process, you can make kind of a synthetic
Speaker 2: fuel from hydrogen and carbon from the atmosphere.
Speaker 4: But again you.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't be surprised to hear that that's probably quite expensive
Speaker 2: and takes massive amounts of renewable energy to make.
Speaker 4: Probably in the future this will be.
Speaker 2: Able to be done at a large scale, but in
Speaker 2: this relatively short kind of twenty five year period we have,
Speaker 2: it's difficult to see how it's going to make a
Speaker 2: major difference.
Speaker 1: Right now. They're kind of expensive, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're several times more than the cost of normal keresy.
Speaker 2: As well as that, there's also just very very small
Speaker 2: supply of these fuels at the moment, and scaling up
Speaker 2: will be a massive task.
Speaker 3: If you look at this sort of ramp up goals
Speaker 3: or sustainable aviation fuel, they're talking about ten percent sustainable
Speaker 3: aviation fuel blended into regular jet fuel in twenty thirty,
Speaker 3: So essentially it's a long drawn solution. It's not going
Speaker 3: to be something that sort of decalbonizes the industry tomorrow.
Speaker 3: It's going to be a long roadmap towards it, but
Speaker 3: it does seem to be the only real solution that
Speaker 3: the airline industry has as they work on radical designs
Speaker 3: and new technologies.
Speaker 1: Some airlines allow passengers to pay more for a ticket
Speaker 1: to support these cleaner fuels. How does that work?
Speaker 2: There are some airlines that are kind of tentatively offering it.
Speaker 2: The way it works is, if we take Lufthansa, which
Speaker 2: is Europe's largest airline, they do offer passengers an option
Speaker 2: whereby you can, when booking your ticket, you can pay
Speaker 2: an extra fee for sustainable aviation fuel. Obviously, that fuel
Speaker 2: that passenger buys doesn't get put onto the actual flight
Speaker 2: that passengers taking.
Speaker 4: It will at some point.
Speaker 2: Be put into Lufthansa's fleet somewhere else. Customers don't really
Speaker 2: seem willing to pay that extra for their flight tickets
Speaker 2: to secure these fuels.
Speaker 3: If customers are left to pay for it themselves, most
Speaker 3: of them don't really want to pay because, I mean,
Speaker 3: as some airline executives explained to me the other day,
Speaker 3: if there's a rival airline that's offering a fair that's
Speaker 3: fifteen euros cheaper, people are likely to choose that. So
Speaker 3: would people be extra for sustainable aviation fuel?
Speaker 4: Probably not.
Speaker 1: So, given all the complications here, a lack of a
Speaker 1: viable option, a long timeline before these renewable powered planes
Speaker 1: come into existence, and a lack of willingness of flyers
Speaker 1: to pay extra. Where do things go from here? How
Speaker 1: long do you think before we actually have net zero
Speaker 1: in airline travel?
Speaker 2: If I had to guess, I think it'll be some
Speaker 2: point way beyond twenty to fifty. And there's a lot
Speaker 2: of extremely talented engineers in the aviation sector and scientists
Speaker 2: working on this, so you can never kind of rule
Speaker 2: out a technological solution, But just the targets we're talking
Speaker 2: about seem too soon. All the while, other sectors are
Speaker 2: going to be decarbonizing rapidly, so we know what's happening
Speaker 2: with electric cars, and in some countries are bringing in
Speaker 2: bands in the twenty thirties on new combustion engine sales,
Speaker 2: so we'll see road transport emissions go down. We're probably
Speaker 2: just starting to see industrial emissions go down in the
Speaker 2: electricity generation sector with wind and solar power. Actually, emissions
Speaker 2: in a lot of countries have already fallen quite a
Speaker 2: lot if aviation emissions are continuing to rise because more
Speaker 2: people are flying into the twenty thirties and forties. Are
Speaker 2: we looking at maybe in ten fifteen years from now,
Speaker 2: that aviation is in a kind of world where this
Speaker 2: voter demand to go green is intensifying. Are we looking
Speaker 2: at aviation companies is kind of the new tobacco companies
Speaker 2: of the twenty thirties and twenty forties.
Speaker 3: As a proportion, today, aviation emissions are about two and
Speaker 3: a half percent of global emissions. But as other sectors decubinize,
Speaker 3: that proportions just going to get higher and higher and
Speaker 3: there is going to be more pressure. I mean, before
Speaker 3: the pandemic, we did see activists like Grata Tunberg and
Speaker 3: others talking about flight shaming, where people were told not
Speaker 3: to take unnecessarily flights. And we've seen a resurgence and
Speaker 3: air travel, especially after the pandemic, when people want to
Speaker 3: fly again and everything else. But once that bent up
Speaker 3: demand debits, will flight shaming come back and will the
Speaker 3: aviation industry be under pressure from that?
Speaker 1: Will sid Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 4: Thanks so much, Wes, Thank you so much for having.
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