The Biden administration will allow ethanol producers to access tax credits for sustainable aviation fuel. Farmers and climate groups have mixed reactions.
Burning fuel puts CO2 into the atmosphere. Yes, you might be at close to net zero if it’s a biofuel (e.g., the carbon in the atmosphere goes into the corn, when then goes into the airplane and back into the atmosphere), but we need to be at negative carbon, not net zero.
You can make hydrogen from water, using electricity generated from hydro, solar, wind, or nuclear. But it’s not a cheap, efficient process. Fundamentally, we need to rethink travel.
TBH, I don’t think that it’s going to matter though. Too little, too late. I’ll fight to the bitter end as best I can, but the time to fix this was 40 years ago.
~60% efficiency, I believe? Not far off from pumped hydro in terms of overall efficiency.
The extraordinary cheapness of solar energy has actually made some real green hydrogen commercially viable in the US, especially in conjunction with IRA subsidies. It’s hard to overstate how huge the inflation reduction act has been at promoting transition and renewable technology. The hopeful new tech developments in the field of green hydrogen would be “peaker” electrolyzers – current economics make it pretty hard to have a viable electrolysis plant without having it operate at very high utilization rates. Truthfully, the issue is more one of financing than technology, though tech developments could change that picture. Far better to run electrolyzers than curtail a renewable generation source and I have no doubt this will be a major transition industry.
The bigger issue is that there are no remotely viable hydrogen aircraft. Theoretically, maybe one day, but maintaining liquid hydrogen tanks is impractical even for automobiles. It makes even less sense in the goddamn sky. Revolutionary new tech would need to happen before this was a viable option for airlines. So this kind of plant is probably smarter to be producing e.g., ammonia, especially since some major shipping companies have already signed contracts to build ammonia-fuel cargo ships so the demand will definitely exist.
Unfortunately, there’s no carbon-free alternative to flying in the near future. Which is why the best approach is to minimize flying. The EU way is the right way; pick busy flight corridors and focus on them for high speed rail.
Now look at the top 3 US flight corridors. Last I looked, it was LA-Las Vegas, Hawai’i-Ohahu, and Atlanta-Orlando. Brightline is currently deploying high speed rail service for that first route. Flawed as hell service, but service nevertheless. The second is probably always going to be stuck to flight (but also, less tourism to the islands would benefit them tremendously either way). The third has huge potential to be built out into a rail corridor (Brightline Florida already has plans to expand to Jacksonville and an Atlanta-Savannah Amtrak route is already in development – would not be hard to close that gap).
Bluntly: no.
Burning fuel puts CO2 into the atmosphere. Yes, you might be at close to net zero if it’s a biofuel (e.g., the carbon in the atmosphere goes into the corn, when then goes into the airplane and back into the atmosphere), but we need to be at negative carbon, not net zero.
If the fuel you were burning was liquid hydrogen, then we’d be okay. But any kind of hydrocarbon, regardless of the source, not so much.
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You can make hydrogen from water, using electricity generated from hydro, solar, wind, or nuclear. But it’s not a cheap, efficient process. Fundamentally, we need to rethink travel.
TBH, I don’t think that it’s going to matter though. Too little, too late. I’ll fight to the bitter end as best I can, but the time to fix this was 40 years ago.
~60% efficiency, I believe? Not far off from pumped hydro in terms of overall efficiency.
The extraordinary cheapness of solar energy has actually made some real green hydrogen commercially viable in the US, especially in conjunction with IRA subsidies. It’s hard to overstate how huge the inflation reduction act has been at promoting transition and renewable technology. The hopeful new tech developments in the field of green hydrogen would be “peaker” electrolyzers – current economics make it pretty hard to have a viable electrolysis plant without having it operate at very high utilization rates. Truthfully, the issue is more one of financing than technology, though tech developments could change that picture. Far better to run electrolyzers than curtail a renewable generation source and I have no doubt this will be a major transition industry.
The bigger issue is that there are no remotely viable hydrogen aircraft. Theoretically, maybe one day, but maintaining liquid hydrogen tanks is impractical even for automobiles. It makes even less sense in the goddamn sky. Revolutionary new tech would need to happen before this was a viable option for airlines. So this kind of plant is probably smarter to be producing e.g., ammonia, especially since some major shipping companies have already signed contracts to build ammonia-fuel cargo ships so the demand will definitely exist.
Unfortunately, there’s no carbon-free alternative to flying in the near future. Which is why the best approach is to minimize flying. The EU way is the right way; pick busy flight corridors and focus on them for high speed rail.
Now look at the top 3 US flight corridors. Last I looked, it was LA-Las Vegas, Hawai’i-Ohahu, and Atlanta-Orlando. Brightline is currently deploying high speed rail service for that first route. Flawed as hell service, but service nevertheless. The second is probably always going to be stuck to flight (but also, less tourism to the islands would benefit them tremendously either way). The third has huge potential to be built out into a rail corridor (Brightline Florida already has plans to expand to Jacksonville and an Atlanta-Savannah Amtrak route is already in development – would not be hard to close that gap).
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