Sustainable Snippets — Electrifying Aviation

Abhijith Vinod
2 min readJul 29, 2024

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I recently read an article in the World Economic Forum that promotes the need to electrify the aviation industry and enhance hybrid aircraft manufacture. Here’s a simplified version to elevate your sustainable seconds🌍

Decarbonizing the aviation industry is challenging — mainly due to the increasing number of air travelers each year. With more than 140 countries, including the highest polluters aiming for net-zero emissions, minor technological advancements in the aviation industry aren’t enough to create an impactful change due to their contributions to almost 3% of global annual CO2 emissions. A combination of strategies encouraged by incentives and policies, like Sustainable Fuel production, or airport infrastructure enhancement, for instance, are the need of the hour.

Electrification has clearly shown a positive impact in decarbonizing the automotive industry. One of the complex vehicles produced, electrifying an aircraft seems problematic — mainly due to reasons considering the weight of the battery. For example, to fully electrify a Boeing 737, you should replace all the passengers and the cargo with batteries to fly for under an hour.

An electric alternative is hybrids. A hybrid aircraft relies on an additional energy source and battery power. A promising hybrid option is to utilize fossil fuels and a turbocharger that provides energy for the required reserves. The usage of electric motors provides a further improvement in performance.

Hybrid planes could also reduce an airport’s carbon footprint and improve local air quality.

On the other hand, producing batteries can be more polluting when compared to jet fuel processing, due to the involvement of energy-intensive activities like mining and manufacturing. Studies show that using the current electric grid system to power an aircraft would produce around 25% more carbon dioxide than a jet-fuelled aircraft.

Sustainable aviation fuels can reduce an aircraft’s net carbon dioxide emissions by around 80%. However, the supply is limited, and using more biomass for fuel could create a deficit in food production, leading to massive deforestation.

Therefore, an industrial decarbonization plan must be designed with the benefits of building more renewable generation. Alternative approaches like synthetic sustainable fuels, or switching to new fuels like hydrogen should also be considered as part of the industry-wide net-zero solution.

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Abhijith Vinod
Abhijith Vinod

Written by Abhijith Vinod

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