begin quote from:https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/12/swiss-scientist-jet-fuel-aviation-sunlight-air/
Swiss scientists are making jet fuel from sunlight and air
The IATA believes sustainable jet fuel will need to play a substantial role in achieving the global target of net CO2 emissions by 2050.
Image: UNSPLASH/Eva Darron
Johnny Wood
Senior Writer, Formative Content
Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale
Stay up to date:
Aviation, Travel and Tourism
Listen to the article
7 min listen- Scientists have developed a process using sunlight and air to create carbon-neutral jet fuel.
- The process could sustainably fuel planes, ships and road haulage.
- Sustainable aviation fuels are a key part of the industry’s plans to decarbonize.
Scientists have developed a way to make carbon-neutral jet fuel for hard-to-electrify heavy transport using sunlight and air.
The
fuels release as much carbon dioxide (CO2) when combusted as they
absorb from the atmosphere when produced, so no additional CO2 emissions
are generated.
The new process could further efforts to combat climate change by decarbonizing transport sectors like aviation, which is responsible for almost 3% of all human-made carbon dioxide emissions, shipping and road haulage.
Researchers,
led by Aldo Steinfeld, Professor of Renewable Energy Sources at ETH
Zurich, have developed an industrial plant that extracts carbon dioxide
(CO2) and water from the air. Solar energy is then used to split
these compounds and produce syngas - a mixture of hydrogen and carbon
monoxide. This is then further processed to create kerosene and methanol
which can be used as a substitute for traditional fuels.
Sustainable jet fuel: ready for take-off
The technology is now advanced enough to use in commercial operations. Funding is in place to build the world’s first industrial-scale production plant for solar fuels in Germany, which is due to come online in 2023.
Challenges do remain, though, if the new process is to be competitive and scalable.
The
study, published in Nature, estimates “solar kerosene” fuel would cost
between $1.35-$2.2 (€1.20-€2.00) per litre once produced at scale. But
high initial investment costs are a major barrier, and the business
model is yet to be proven. The report’s authors suggest bodies like the
European Union adopt a quota system requiring airlines to source a
proportion of their fuel from solar sources, to help pay to scale the
technology.
As well as its environmental credentials, the
process has another benefit. Its reliance on sunlight makes desert areas
prime land for production sites, leaving valuable agricultural land
available for growing crops and rearing livestock. This is in contrast
to biofuels which often rely on crops being grown to be converted into
fuel.
The sky’s the limit
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) says sustainable aviation fuel will need to play a substantial role in achieving the global target of net CO2 emissions by 2050.
This
view is shared by the International Energy Agency (IEA), with its
Sustainable Development Scenario anticipating sustainable jet fuels will
account for 10% of aviation fuel demand by 2030, and almost 20% a
decade later.
Global passenger numbers are expected to reach 7.5 billion by 2035,
up from 4.5 billion in 2019 before pandemic disruption halted many
flights, according to IATA. Investment in developing and adopting
cleaner fuels compatible with existing aircraft is therefore key to
realizing these ambitions. While the business case for sustainable
aviation fuel (SAF) is still in development, scaling up this technology
will bring down costs.
Have you read?
Initiatives like the World Economic Forum’s Clean Skies for Tomorrow Coalition,
provide a platform for airlines, airports, fuel suppliers and other
global aviation stakeholders to accelerate SAF deployment. More than 60
companies have so far joined forces, aiming to power global aviation
with 10% sustainable fuels by 2030, as part of efforts to reach net zero
emissions by 2050.
What is the World Economic Forum doing to reduce aviation's carbon footprint?
“Achieving
our ambition will require commitment, innovation and cross-industry
collaboration from a wide range of stakeholders,” said Lauren Uppink
Calderwood, Head of Aviation, Travel and Tourism at the World Economic
Forum.
Don't miss any update on this topic
Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.
License and Republishing
World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.
Related topics:
How the midterms changed the 2024 primaries for Biden and Trump
Much of the conversation in the leadup to the midterms revolved around how Republicans were clamoring for former President Donald Trump’s endorsement, while Democrats wanted President Joe Biden to stay away. A little over a month after the election, however, the picture looks quite different.
Biden is in his best position in a while to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2024. Trump, on the other hand, finds his position among Republicans not only weakened by the midterm results, but he actually trails in a number of polls to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a potential GOP primary.
Perhaps the best indication of Biden’s strength is that he has no obvious potential 2024 primary opponent at this point. Now, as an incumbent, he was unlikely to ever have a slew of challengers. You could have imagined, though, that at least one major Democrat would have challenged Biden had the Democrats done poorly in the midterms.
Instead, the opposite has happened. Major potential foes such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom have said explicitly that they will not run against Biden. Almost every power player in the Democratic Party has said they will back Biden, if he decides to run again.
The same cannot be said for Trump. Even after he declared his run for the presidency last month, just one senator has endorsed his bid for another term. Potential Republican challengers are not bowing out of the 2024 primary.
A big reason for this is that Trump’s poll numbers look weak. I’m not just talking about his polling against other Republicans. I’m talking about how Republican voters see him.
One of Trump’s biggest attributes has been that he has convinced his supporters that he is a winner. Three years ago, polls showed about 80% of Republicans believed he was the party’s best chance to beat the Democratic nominee for president. As recently as late 2021, a plurality of Republicans did so.
A Marist College poll taken after the midterms found that percentage had dropped to 35%, while the percentage of Republicans who thought Trump would not be the strongest candidate jumped to 54%. There can be little doubt that’s at least partially a response to Trump-backed candidates doing poorly in swing states during the midterms.
Base popularity
But it’s not just that fewer Republicans now think that Trump is their best bet in a general election. They’re also less inclined to say they like him. His favorable rating among Republicans in a Quinnipiac University poll in October 2021 stood at 86%. The same poll this month had Trump’s favorable rating at 71% among Republicans.
Our CNN/SSRS poll out earlier this month found DeSantis with a higher favorable rating than Trump among Republicans, which indicates that the former president is no longer the most liked candidate within his party
This marks another big difference between Biden and Trump: Biden’s trendline for popularity among his base is going in the right direction, and he’s the most popular politician within the Democratic Party. The aforementioned CNN poll put Biden’s favorable rating well into the 80s and well ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris and Newsom among Democrats.
Biden’s job approval rating with Democrats came in at 86% in the Quinnipiac poll. That’s a jump from 79% in Quinnipiac’s poll taken before the election. Indeed, nearly every major poll has Biden’s approval rating above 80% among Democrats. That’s important because every example of a president facing a major intraparty challenge when running for reelection has come when his approval rating was lower than 70% within his own party.
Primary choices
I should note that there are polls (such as the CNN survey) that show more Democrats than not want someone other than Biden to be their the Democratic nominee.
Even here, though, Biden’s got two bits of positive news. First, his numbers, unlike Trump’s, are on the upswing. Second, the vast majority of Democrats could not name a specific candidate besides Biden whom they would want as their nominee.
The rare 2024 polls that match Biden against other named Democrats (such as Harris, who is very unlikely to run against him) put him up by north of 15 points. For comparison, Barack Obama led Hillary Clinton by 15 points in a late-2010 poll of a hypothetical 2012 Democratic primary. Jimmy Carter was trailing Ted Kennedy in late 1978 polling of a hypothetical 1980 primary.
Given the polls, it’s not too surprising that Biden, like Obama and unlike Carter, doesn’t seem to have any powerful Democrat willing to challenge him for his party’s nomination.
Trump’s numbers against other Republicans are far weaker and, again, heading in the wrong direction. When you put Trump against DeSantis and other named candidates, Trump’s onetime 40-point advantage has been slimmed to low double-digits over DeSantis.
Other polling suggests that these findings may understate Trump’s weakness. There isn’t a single poll of a two-way matchup between Trump and DeSantis (that meets CNN’s standards for publication) that has Trump ahead. Marquette University Law School’s poll had Trump down 20 points to the Florida governor a few weeks ago.
Perhaps most interestingly, a Monmouth University poll released on Friday asked Republicans in an open-ended question (i.e., the poll didn’t name any candidates) who they wanted to be their 2024 nominee. Only 26% of respondents picked Trump. He trailed DeSantis, who came in at 39%.
This indicates that Trump’s biggest strength at this point among Republicans is name recognition – something other Republicans will get a lot more of as the primary season heats up.
Biden probably won’t need to worry much about Democrat challengers getting too much oxygen for a simple reason: Nobody who can truly threaten him for the 2024 nomination looks like they’re going to run at this point.
No comments:
Post a Comment