Unfortunately, the renaissance of electrification we see in passenger vehicles is unlikely to be adapted to heavier forms of transport in the foreseeable future – such as aircraft, cargo ships and semi-tractor trailers. Today’s batteries simply do not have enough power to adequately compensate for their weight and bulk. But that does not mean we can not continue to take steps to reduce the carbon footprint of commercial people and freight carriers.
In his new book, How to avoid a climate catastrophe: the solutions we have and the breakthroughs we needBill Gates, with the help of numerous experts on topics, sets out his comprehensive plan to stop the coming environmental apocalypse, stem the effects of human-caused climate change, and keep the earth habitable for the next generation.
Penguin Randomhouse
Adapted from How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates, published on February 16, 2021 by Alfred A. Knopf, a print of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2021 by Bill Gates.
Not long ago, my friend Warren Buffett and I talked about how the world can fly airplanes. Warren asked, “Why can’t we run a jumbo jet on batteries?” He already knew that the fuel he transports makes up 20 to 40 percent of his weight when an airplane takes off. When I told him this staggering fact – that you need 35 times more batteries by weight to get the same energy as jet fuel – he immediately understood. The more power you need, the heavier your aircraft gets. At one point it is so heavy that it cannot get off the ground. Warren smiles, nods and just says, “Ah.”
If you’re trying to drive something as heavy as a cargo ship or a plane, the rule of thumb I mentioned earlier is – the bigger the vehicle you want to move, and the further you want to drive it without loading, the harder it will be to to use electricity as a power source – becomes a law. Excluding an unlikely breakthrough, the batteries will never be light and powerful enough to move aircraft and ships more than short distances.
Think of the state of modern art today. The best electric aircraft on the market can carry two passengers, reach a top speed of 210 miles per hour and fly three hours before being recharged. * Meanwhile, a mid-capacity Boeing 787 can carry 296 passengers, up to 650 kilometers per hour, and fly for almost 20 hours before stopping for fuel. In other words, an aircraft-powered airplane can fly more than three times as fast, six times as long, and transport nearly 150 times as many people as the best electric aircraft on the market.
Batteries are getting better and better, but it’s hard to see how it will narrow this gap. If we are lucky, it can be up to three times as energy efficient as it is now, in which case it will be 12 times less energy efficient than gas or jet fuel. Our best way is to replace aviation fuel with electric fuel and advanced biofuels, but there are many premiums attached to it.
The same goes for cargo ships. The best conventional container vessels can carry 200 times more cargo than one of the two electric vessels currently in use, and they can take routes that are 400 times longer. These are important benefits for ships that have to cross the entire ocean.
Given how important container ships have become in the world economy, I think it would never be financially viable to try to run them on anything other than liquid fuel. The switch to alternatives will do us a lot of good; because shipping alone accounts for 3 percent of all emissions, the use of clean fuel will give us a significant reduction. Unfortunately, the fuel that container ships carry – this is called bunker fuel – is cheap because it is produced from the drought of the oil refining process. Because their current fuel is so cheap, the Green Premium for ships is very high.
Would most people be willing to accept these increases? It is not clear. But think that the last time the United States increased federal gas taxes – imposed any increase whatsoever – was more than a quarter of a century ago, in 1993.
There are four ways to reduce transportation emissions.
One is to do less of it – less management, flying and shipping. We need to encourage more alternative ways, such as walking, cycling and riding together, and it’s great that some cities use smart urban plans to do this.
Another way to reduce emissions is to use less carbon-intensive materials in car manufacturing, although this does not affect the fuel-based emissions we address in this chapter. Each car is made of materials such as steel and plastic that cannot be manufactured without releasing greenhouse gases. The less of this material we need in our cars, the lower their carbon footprint will be.
The third way to reduce emissions is to use fuel more efficiently. This topic gets a lot of attention from legislators and press, at least when it comes to passenger vehicles and trucks; most large economies have fuel efficiency standards for those vehicles, and they have made a huge difference by forcing automakers to fund advanced engineering for more efficient engines.
But the standards do not go far enough. For example, there are proposed emission standards for international shipping and aviation, but this is almost unenforceable. Which country’s jurisdiction will cover carbon emissions from a container ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean?
Although the manufacture and use of more efficient vehicles are important steps in the right direction, it will not bring us to zero. Even if you burn less gasoline, you still burn gasoline.
This brings me to the fourth and most efficient way we can move toward zero emissions through transportation: switching to electric vehicles and alternative fuels.
We can speed up the transition by adopting policies that encourage people to buy motor vehicles and create a network of charging stations so that it is more practical to own. Nationwide commitments can help increase the supply of cars and reduce their costs; China, India and several countries in Europe have all announced goals in the coming decades to phase out fossil-fueled vehicles – mostly passenger vehicles. California has committed to buying electric buses only by 2029 and to banning the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035.
To have all these motor vehicles we hope to have on the road, we still need a lot of clean electricity – another reason why it is so important to harness renewable resources and make breakthroughs in generation and storage.
Finally, we need a major effort to explore all the ways in which we can make advanced biofuels and cheap electric fuels. Businesses and researchers are exploring different ways – for example, new ways to make hydrogen using electricity, or to use solar power, or to use microbes that naturally produce hydrogen as a by-product. The more we explore, the more opportunities we create for breakthroughs.