You can carry on flying, the government has told the British public, as it outlines its plan to reduce transport emissions to virtually zero by 2050.
Ministers say new technology will allow domestic flights to be almost emissions-free by 2040, and international aviation to be near zero-carbon by mid-century.
The policy has been ridiculed by environmentalists, who say the government is putting far too much faith in innovation.
They say demand for flying and driving must be curbed if the UK is to meet its ambitious climate targets.
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#Carbon Footprint
#Transport
Atlantis Viewpoint
As new regulations in Europe - and elsewhere - come into force, all industries will have to make a big move to reduce GHG emissions. The transport sector is no different, but it is one of those that most affect our day-to-day lives. In the UK, transportation is responsible for 27% of the countries emissions, making it the single biggest emitting sector. Before the pandemic, flying made up about 7% of the UK’s overall emissions. Also, a recent study showed that trucks accounted for 2% of vehicles in the EU, but 22% of road transport emissions. This means a lot of work needs to be done to reduce the transport sectors GHG emission to zero, so not producing any emissions and far less air pollution.
For this reason, the development of new fuels and technologies in the sector - such as hydrogen-powered vehicles and even electric planes or wind-powered ships - is happening very quickly. During the following decades, we'll see new electric aircrafts which are currently being developed. This gives us time to set up a True Clean Energy generating system that can supply all of our energy for the foreseeable future. With the technology and resources that we have right now we can already start replacing all of the old fossil fuels power plants, cars, trucks and buses. Aviation is an area we will have to address eventually but there is a lot of other work we can do right now to clean up our outdated transport and energy systems.
In the last few years sales of diesel vehicles have been plummeting, and many governments worldwide want to outlaw the sale of all petrol and diesel cars from 2030. Replacing these for hydrogen or electric vehicles is a great step forward to stop pollution coming from private transportation. However, we do need to know what systems are going to be used to supply this far greater demand for electricity and hydrogen….
If we are still generating a huge amount of our electricity from fossil fuels, as we do now, and these power stations simply increase their production to supply this new demand, then we are not solving the problem but simply shifting our emissions from our streets to power stations. However, if we ensure that new clean energy power plants are being built to keep up with this steadily increasing demand, Concentrated solar power plants, Solar PV farms and wind power. Then we will be ready to generate enough clean electricity and clean hydrogen to power the vehicles that we need. We must solve the root cause of these problems so our transport system can be powered in a truly clean way!
