Air transport, stop punitive ecology!
It’s a done deal: the total decarbonisation of air transport by 2050 will not be possible. Indeed, the 14,000 or so aircraft currently on order will be delivered between 2025 and 2035 and they have a lifespan of at least 30 years. However, they are built with a technology that still generates CO² and the production of SAF (Sustainable Aviation Fuel) will be largely insufficient to ensure carbon-free air transport.
Is this a reason to do nothing? Certainly not. The airline industry has been tackling the problem head-on for at least a good twenty years. Today’s aircraft are much less fuel-hungry and less energy-intensive. Despite the cries of outrage from some apostles of ecology, air transport has not waited for them to work on this issue, if only because it is profitable. The less fossil fuel the appliances consume, the more profitable the sector is.
But the ecological revolution will not happen with a wave of a magic wand. Several hundred billion dollars will have to be devoted to research, and it will have to cover the entire spectrum of this activity. And first of all, the manufacture of engines, because this is the major factor of pollution. Designing new machines that consume very little fuel is a long-term task. Imagining new systems to provide sufficient power for the take-off of 400-tonne aircraft is not currently conceivable, at least in the current state of research. And it will also be necessary to gain in decarbonization in the assembly of aircraft, but also – and this is undoubtedly the first progress to be made in the reorganization of airspace in order to shorten distances and consequently travel times. Much remains to be done in this area and we know, at least in Europe, how to proceed with the implementation of SESAR (Single European Sky ATM Research), in other words, the management of European airspace in a single entity and not fragmented into 43 control centres as is the case now. Everything is ready, all that remains is to convince the states and the air traffic controllers’ unions and this is perhaps the most difficult.
In short, we will have to put money, a lot of money into research. The subject is exciting. Creating carbon-free aviation is great, especially since air transport is essential to the survival of the planet and the prosperity of peoples. So why does he have to suffer the vindictiveness of political leaders? The latter, at least in some European countries, including France in the first place, but this is also the case in the Netherlands, Germany and even in the Nordic countries, are determined to put the brakes on airlines and, when this is not possible, to tax the air sector in favour of land transport. I am thinking mainly of rail transport. Do we seriously believe that subsidizing the train by taking money from the plane is the right solution to bring air transport to be decarbonized? How can we reasonably divert a so-called Chirac tax, the purpose of which was to provide the means to vaccinate the populations that are in dire need of it, to the benefit of a general budget that no one seems to be able to control anymore?
What kind of jealousy or demagogy drives the deputies to tax the users of the plane on the pretext that they must be able to pay? Of course, the enormous financial needs necessary for research will have to be paid for by someone, and it will certainly not be the states that will always have other priorities. So, of course, these hundreds of billions of dollars will inevitably have to be provided by air transport itself, and first and foremost by consumers. But everyone will have to get involved, whether it’s passengers, manufacturers, engine manufacturers and even airports. And instead of working in a dispersed manner, it would be wise for the collection of money to be centralized with a global organization, why not the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) which could set the main lines of research and distribute the necessary funds in a balanced way with a single goal: the decarbonization of global air transport.
We should listen more often to Bertrand Piccard, the founder and director of Solar Impulse. He talks about the future without blaming the present. He talks about real technological leaps that are not only the improvement of current processes but real innovations, which means that we don’t know about them nowadays. For him, ecology is not a constraint but a real progress that cannot be achieved by destroying the present. I can well imagine him at the head of the huge investment fund that I ardently hope will be created.
