The cost of a return trip to New York is on track to rise by £40 as a result of incoming net zero regulations, according to figures from Virgin Atlantic.
The extra burden on travellers is expected if the cost of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is passed on directly. Calculations by Virgin Atlantic, a pioneer in using the greener jet fuel, show that ticket prices would have to rise 6pc.
For a return flight to New York that would amount to a £40 increase at current prices, based on two one-way fares costing about £350 each.
SAF is a refined blend of waste oils, animal fats and ethanol from corn. The fuel is viewed as the most practical route towards reducing aviation’s net CO2 emission before completely new technologies, such as hydrogen propulsion, become available next decade or beyond.
It’s not going to be hydrogen, it’ll be manufactured fuels from hydrogen.
But that thing I’ve kept saying all these years. It’s amazin’ how cheap dealing with all of this actually is. Certainly that’s much cheaper than the Air Passenger Duty currently imposed upon such flights.
The more socialist and misanthorpic end of the green movement is going to end up mightily pissed off in fact – markets are sufficiently adaptable that we’re simply not all going to end up easting insect added turnip flour in our 15 minute pods. Sure, their pissing about is going to make the transition much more expensive than it need be but the end game is going to be a world that looks much like our own just even richer. Not their planned regression to the Middle Ages.
“ethanol from corn”
Aye, use the last of the top soil on the prairies to burn in cars and planes.
Stupid fuckers.
It’s not cheap if it is more expensive.
Using food to burn as fuel is as PiP says just stupid.
The dystopia is here and it is only going to get worse. Wake up Tim. The days of prosperity and growth are over by design.
Thanks for telling me what the fuel is PiP.
Of course if we really wanted to reduce carbon emissions to zero, we could burn ammonia. Generated by hydrogen produced by nukes. Simple 20th century technology.
But I naturally don’t support this since the pong from the garage on the corner would be a damn nuisance.
They won’t stop at adding the actual costs though. They don’t want people eating insect added turnip flour for economic reasons.
Emma Thompson will be upset. Perhaps someone will design a fuel with pretty gold particles in suspension that sells for $10,000 per teaspoonful. Then she can flaunt how much she pays to ensure her daily trips across the Atlantic are Green…
I’m betting the worst of those 3 : oils, fats, corn is the last one. When you’re trying to greenwash you always hide the ugly one at the end.
So turning corn into bioethanol – requires fermentation iirc, which releases CO2, so a CO2 tax or equivalent needs to be crow barred in here. And it isn’t.
I appreciate the argument that a CO2 tax is sort of on the later burning when the plane is up in the sky.
Unless I’m mistaken refining oils into fuels doesn’t have an intermediate step where lots of CO2 is produced.
Part of the net zero goal is to put in place a process of removing CO2 from the atmosphere. This is different from carbon capture and storage (which prevents new CO2 going into the atmosphere). No one knows how it will be done (though there was a pilot plant in Canada – no idea if it is still running) but it is expected to require about a sixth of global energy output to do it. I think dumping iron filings into the oceans would be a cheaper way of doing it but what would I know?
I suspect that the definition of net zero will be changed repeatedly once policy makers realise just how unworkable that whole thing is and that it would be best just to tax carbon and let the market get on with things.
1. As Tim has repeatedly pointed out reserves of commodity X are 20-30 years. And always have been. Oil is no different.
2. Think of the starving children in Africa. If we are to grow enough food to feed them we need more CO2 not less.
3. “Sustainable” is a buzz word that can change meaning according to the speaker, or mean nothing at all.
SF
suspect that the definition of net zero will be changed repeatedly once policy makers realise just how unworkable that whole thing is
Do you really think that Ed Milliband has the intelligence to realise that or indeed any LibDem or Green politician at home or abroad ?
the definition of net zero will be changed repeatedly once policy makers realise just how unworkable that whole thing is
It changes as the target gets overtaken.
“We need to cap temperature rises to 2.0degrees”
Ok. Hmmmmm…. there, done.
“We need to cap temperature rises to 1.5degrees”
Sigh. Ok. Hrrrrrgghhh. Ogh. Ok, done.
“We need to cap temperature rises to 1.0degrees”
Ah shit. Ok then. ARGGGGGHHHH!!!!!! There. Done.
“We need to cap temperature rises to minus 5 degrees”
Oh, fuck off.
Wasn’t it the sensible Swedes who had a frenzy of building “waste” incinerator plants for “waste to power” and discovered there wasn’t enough waste?
Some time back I saw mentions of them buying garbage to burn…. – anybody know how that’s going?
Dunno Tomo.
I seem to remember reading somewhere that the Swedes intend to build more nukes though.
“ … net CO2 emission…” like Net Zero is just an accounting trick.
The C02 actual emitted from the jet engine by burning oil from plants, is netted off against the CO2 notional recovered by new plant growth. CO2 actual is added to the atmosphere now, has its alleged global warming effect now, so it makes no difference that C02 notional will be recovered over the next 80 years as this will not stop or reverse the alleged prior warming.
Since plant respiration is a cycle, the C extracted from the CO2 to build tissue and the O2 emitted into the atmosphere will meet again when the plant dies or is burnt to form C02.
It’s like filling a bucket of water from one end of a full bath tub, leaving it for ten minutes then pouring it back into the other end of the bath tub and declaring the there is net emptying of the bath water.
96% of CO2 on Earth is in the oceans and there is continuous gaseous exchange between air and water driven by changes in water temperature – not changes in atmospheric temperature.
The CO2 atmospheric will remain constant over time. During the global shutdown of the recent Fakedemic, C02 emissions from fossil fuels fell 14% but atmospheric concentration increased.
I’m not sure I want to be on an aircraft burning corn ethanol and the other shit in there. Modern jet engines are highly optimised to burn a particular variety of kerosene (Jet-A1). They need to be to meet both the fuel efficiency requirements of airlines and emission rules from govts (largely CA-influenced). Moving away from that Jet-A1 mix is going to have bad effects in efficiency, engine lifetime and emissions since highly optimised systems are very sensitive to changes in operating environment.
The really tricky bit, TG, is preventing it solidifying at -50°C – see BA38 for what happens next, saved from disaster by a couple of very capable pilots.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thirty-Seconds-Impact-Peter-Burkill/dp/1449088589
tthe end game is going to be a world that looks much like our own just even richer. Not their planned regression to the Middle Ages.
Well, I hope so, but it’s already full of windmills so I’m not over-confident.
Net Zero will fail eventually. It’s just a question of how much damage it will do (probably loads) before the people responsible are lionized.
Drax plc have bought the Basler steam aero engine patents and are going to start flying wood chips from USA to Yorkshire
@Tim
Did you read article?
It’s amazin’ how
cheapExpensive dealing with all of this actually is£40 is Gate’s funded Telegraph’s attempt to make it sound cheap. By 2040 fares will be at least 35% higher and no figure for 2050 as that’s probably x4 fare increase. Plus food price inflation and more starving Africans, poor etc
Also, the UK rules are more draconian than the EU’s, more going via Holland, France, RoI
The misanthropic end of the green movement has seized the reins of power and is busy setting deadlines to ban things like cars, heating, lorries, etc, without there being any prospect of functional and economical replacement.
So it is in one sense too late. Even if all these deadlines get pushed back 5 years every 5 years it has destroyed any kind of investment climate in Europe, and in Sunak’s copycat UK. Y’know, I thought you guys left in order to not have Brussels Bureaucrats making these detailed “there is no alternative” decisions, not to carry on gold-plating them!
tomo,
CHP from waste incineration is popular in some regions of Germany, my own house is heated by a district heating system powered by one. I quite like the idea. I more like the idea that because of this my house will be in the last tranche of those to be declared uninhabitable by EU and German heating regulations because of climate shit, and that as long as the plant stays operational I won’t be forced to spend a six figure sum on a heat pump that the municipality will refuse to connect to the grid because the 60 year old leccy cables under my estate aren’t thick enough for it.
So I personally won’t have to demolish my house and move in to a pod before 2040 at the earliest.
Whether the rest of Germany, having been booted out of their climate-changing houses, or freezing in the dark due to the attempt to power 1.21 Biggawatts of heat pump and electric car by windmill, will have caught on by then, and acquired some sub-Saharan felines and repurposed the football stadia for more Roman-style entertainment, we can only hope.