The renaissance of electrification that we are seeing in passenger vehicles is, unfortunately, possible. In the future, it will not be compatible with heavy forms of transport such as aircraft, cargo ships and semi-tractor trailers. Today’s batteries may not have enough power to adequately offset their weight and bulk. But that doesn’t mean we still can’t take steps to reduce the carbon footprints of our business people and cargo movers.
In his new book, How to Avoid Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Success We Need, Tech Luminary Bill Gates – with the help of countless subject matter experts – presents a comprehensive plan to prevent the coming environmental revelation, the effects of human-climate change, and to keep the earth habitable for the next generation.
Penguin Randomhouse
Convenient to How to Avoid Climate Disaster: Solutions Our Have and Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates, February 16, 2021 Alfred A. Published by Knopf, Imprint of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Penguin Random House section LLC. Copyright pyrite by Bill Gates 21 2021.
Not long ago, my friend Warren Buffett and I were talking about how the world could decorate airplanes. Warren asked, “Why can’t we run jumbo jets on batteries?” He already knew that when a jet takes off, it weighs 20 to 40 percent. So when I told him this amazing fact – you need 35 times more battery by weight to get as much energy as jet fuel – he understood immediately. The more power you need, the more aircraft you will get. At some point, it is so heavy that it cannot get off the ground. Vren Run laughed, laughed, and said, “Ah.”
When you’re trying to power something as heavy as a container ship or a jetliner, the rule of thumb I mentioned earlier – the bigger the vehicle you want to drive, and the farther you want to drive without recharging, the harder the law becomes Use electricity. With the exception of a few unlikely successes, batteries will never be light and powerful enough to propel planes and ships over short distances.
Think about where the state of the art is today. The best all-electric plane on the market can carry two passengers, reach speeds of up to 210 miles per hour, and fly three hours before recharging. * Meanwhile, the mid-capacity Boeing 787 can carry 296 passengers, reaching 650. Mile an hour, and fly for about 20 hours before stopping for fuel. In other words, a jetliner powered by fossil fuels can fly six times longer, more than three times faster, and can carry 150 times as many people as the best electric plane on the market.
The batteries are getting better, but it’s hard to see how it will close this space. If we were lucky, they could be three times as strong as the current, in which case they would have 12 times less energy than gas or jet fuel. Our best bet is to replace jet fuel with electrofuel and advanced biofuels, but there are premiums that come with them.
The same goes for cargo ships. Excellent traditional container ships can now carry 200 times more cargo than two electric ships in operation, and they can run 400 times longer routes. Those are the main advantages for ships that eventually need to cross the oceans.
Given how important container vessels have become in the global economy, I don’t think it would be economically viable to try to run on anything other than liquid fuel. Switching on options makes us a lot better; Since shipping alone accounts for 3% of all emissions, using clean fuel will significantly reduce our emissions. Unfortunately, container vessels that run on fuel – called bunker fuel – are dirt cheaper, as they are made from the dredge of the oil refining process. Since their current fuel is very cheap, the green premium for ships is very high.
Would most people be willing to accept this increase? It’s not clear. But keep in mind that the last time the United States raised a federal gas tax – no increase anyway – was in 1993, more than a quarter century. I don’t think Americans are keen to pay more for gas.
There are four ways to reduce emissions from transportation.
One of them is to do less – less driving, flying and shipping. We should promote more alternative modes like walking, biking and carpooling, and it’s great that some cities are using smart urban plans to do that.
Another way to cut emissions is that organic-intensive materials can be used to make cars – not enough of what we’ve covered in this chapter will affect fuel-based emissions. Every car is made of materials like steel and plastic that cannot be built without emitting greenhouse gases. The less material we need in our cars, the less carbon footprint they will have.
A third way to reduce emissions is to use more fuel efficiently. The subject gets a lot of attention from legislators and the press, as it is at least related to passenger cars and trucks; Most large economies have fuel efficiency standards for those vehicles, and they have made a big difference by forcing car companies to finance advanced engineering of more efficient engines.
But the standards aren’t going enough. For example, there are suggested emissions standards for international shipping and aviation, but they are almost not enforceable. Which country’s jurisdiction will cover carbon emissions from a container ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean?
In addition, building and using more efficient vehicles is an important step in the right direction, however, it will not make us zero. Even if you burn less gasoline, you are still burning gasoline.
That brings me to the fourth – and most effective – way we can move from transportation to zero emissions: switching to electric vehicles and alternative fuels.
We can speed up the transition by adopting policies that encourage people to buy EVs and create a network of charging stations to make them more practical to own. Nationwide commitments can help increase the supply of cars and reduce their cost; China, India and some European countries have announced plans to ban fossil fuel vehicles – mostly passenger cars – in the coming decades. California is committed to banning only the purchase of electric buses by 2029 and the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035.
Next, to run all these EVs we hope will get on the road, we will need a lot of clean electricity – a new reason why deploying renewable resources and achieving success in pay generation and storage is so important.
After all, we need a huge effort to explore all the ways we can make advanced biofuels and cheap electrofuels. Companies and researchers are exploring many different ways, for example, new ways to create hydrogen using electricity, or using solar power radiation, or using microbes that naturally produce hydrogen as a by-product. The more we explore, the more opportunities we have for success.
