Bill Gates is known worldwide for being founded Microsoft. He recently returned to the spotlight for his predictions and opinions on the Covid-19 pandemic. But another subject that he is passionate about and to which he has dedicated years of study, is the care of the natural environment and, on this question, he has declared what he considers to be the future of transport and travel.
Gates shared that while in recent years industries like the automotive they have worried about making the vehicles more ecological supporting models electric, We will not see this trend reach larger transports, at least not in the short term.
In his new book, “How to prevent a climate disaster: the solutions we have and the advances we need”, the employer warns that the batteries current simply cannot contain enough energy to sufficiently compensate for its weight and volume so they are not viable to move planes O ships. But that doesn’t mean we can’t take steps to reduce the carbon footprint of our commercial and cargo transportation.
In his text, Bill Gates, with the help of countless experts in the field, presents his comprehensive plan to stop what he considers will be a environmental apocalypse caused by the effects of climate change. Among the issues it addresses is precisely that of transport. “Not long ago, my friend Warren Buffett and I was talking about how the world could decarbonize planes. Warren asked, ‘Why can’t we run a jumbo jet with batteries?’ I already knew that when a plane takes off, the fuel which it carries represents 20 to 40% of its weight. Then I told him I would need 35 times more batteries to get the same energy as airplane fuel and he understood immediately. The more power you need, the heavier the plane will be. At some point, it’s so heavy it can’t take off from the ground. “
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He went on to explain that when you try to push something as heavy as one container ship oa passenger plane the same rule applies: the bigger the vehicle you want to move and the farther you want to drive it without recharging, the harder it will be.
Because of the above, unless an advance occurs, it is unlikely that the batteries will ever be light and powerful enough to move planes and ships over shorter distances. Just note that currently the best fully electric aircraft of market can carry only two passengers, reach a top speed of 210 miles per hour and fly for three hours before recharging. Meanwhile, a mid-capacity Boeing 787 can carry 296 passengers and fly for nearly 20 hours before stopping to refuel. In other words, a passenger plane powered by fossil fuels it can fly more than three times faster, for six times as long and carry almost 150 times more people than the best electric plane on the market.
The same goes for the cargo ships. the best container ship conventional ones can carry 200 times more load than either electric boats which are in operation and can travel routes 400 times longer. These are the main advantages for ships that need to cross entire oceans.
Gates also states in his book, published last February 16, that although the batteries are improving it is hard to imagine that they will ever achieve the necessary power. “If we’re lucky, they can become up to three times denser in energy than they are now, in which case they would still be 12 times less dense in energy than gas or jet fuel.”
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So what is the option?
In accordance with Doors our best bet of transport, For now, will be replacing aircraft fuel with electrofuels i biofuels advanced.
In fact, in the case of cargo ships, the employer predicts that it will never be economically viable to try to use them with anything other than liquid fuels. “Making the switch to other alternatives would do us a lot of good. Since shipping accounts for 3% of all emissions, the use of clean fuels would give us a significant reduction. Unfortunately, the fuel that container ships run on, It is called bunker fuel which is very cheap because it is done undoing the refining process of the oils and it’s so cheap that the Green premium for ships is very high. “
Said the above Doors proposes four forms of reduce emissions of transport and not only of large companies, but also of people in general:
Do less, drive less, fly and send. He believes that we should encourage more alternative ways, such as walking, cycling and car sharing, and highlighted what some cities are using. smart urban plans to do just that.
Use less high carbon materials in car manufacturing. Although this would not affect fuel-based emissions, it must be considered that all cars are made of materials such as steel and plastics that cannot be manufactured without emitting. greenhouse gases so the less of these materials are needed the lower the carbon footprint.
The third way to reduce emissions is to use fuels more efficiently, in this sense it has already been asked of automotive companies to finance the engineering of more efficient engines. However in this case it is almost impossible to get the use of gasoline in its entirety.
Finally, Gates’ fourth and most effective recommendation to move toward zero transportation emissions is to switch to electric vehicles i alternative fuels that is why it is necessary to encourage people to buy these types of options by creating a network of charging stations so that they are more practical for this it will take the production of a lot clean electricity, One more reason why it is so important to implement renewable sources and look for advances in generation and storage.
Finally, we need a massive effort to explore all the ways we can produce biofuels advanced and cheap electrofuels. Companies and researchers are exploring several different avenues, for example, new ways to produce hydrogen using electricity or solar energy, Or using microbes that produce hydrogen naturally as a byproduct. The more we explore, the more opportunities we will create to make progress, Gates concluded.